On 7th March 2011 the London Review Bookshop hosted the launch of Omar Barghouti’s book “BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights”.
Zionist: Omar, you are living in Israel, you are doing a PhD, you are studying in an Israeli university. How does that equate with your boycott campaign, isn’t that hypocritical to live in Israel and consume everything Israeli, then call for a boycott of Israel?
And secondly, if God forbid, you ever needed a life saving medicine, or a member of your family.. in Israel, would you accept that medicine or would you reject that life saving medicine?
Omar Barghouti: I think Mandela went to an apartheid university, when you are living under apartheid you have no choice. You pay taxes to the apartheid regime, you accept services from the apartheid regime, how else can you survive? You go to hospitals, you go to universities, you go to the post office, you go to government offices in the apartheid regime. You are a ‘subject’ of that colonial system, there is no other way. Gandhi studied at a British university as well.
The point is that when you are under occupation, when you are under apartheid, no have no moral choice. There is no choice. We ask people from outside to boycott because they have a moral choice. Responsibility comes with choice.
Germans under Nazi rule who couldn’t open their mouths were cowards but we can perhaps forgive them for not opening their mouths when you think you would be shot by the Nazi genocidal regime if they opened their mouths. Israelis that stay silent are far more cowardly because they do have a choice and they wont get shot if they stand up against the occupation. So we measure this with how much choice you have. When you have no choice what do you do?
So there is absolutely no double standard for people under oppression to call on people who are not under oppression, standing in solidarity with them, to oppose and boycott completely the oppressive regime. What we cannot do, you can do in the UK.
The Adidas – Don’t Run With Apartheid campaign is urging people throughout the world to take action at Adidas stores and stockists so that Adidas will reconsider sponsoring the 2012 Jerusalem Marathon.
Adidas has already hinted that they are wary of an international boycott and bad publicity. This is an opportunity for all people of conscience to get involved.
On Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan : Walls of division – Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters adds his voice to Palestinian people and others demanding Israel to remove its illegal separation wall.
Roger Waters from Pink Floyd calls for solidarity with the BDS campaign against apartheid Israel.
The Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity protest, comprised of Israelis and Palestinians, takes place in East Jerusalem each week. This week’s action was met with violence as the police sought to shut down the protest. Three activists were taken into police custody. Sheikh Jarrah is a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem subject to house evictions and increased illegal settlement.
While the recent earthquake shook the bones of Christchurch in New Zealand, an earthquake of another kind rippled briefly through the Australian landscape. I want to make sure it is not ignored. The results of the 12 year nationwide Challenging Racism survey from the University of Western Sydney shocked me to the bone. Download the national results here, state comparisons here, and click on the map here to find out further information about racism in your region, which is where you are able to compare the different groups who are the main targets of racists with the state and national averages.
The results for Wide Bay-Burnett (my area in Queensland) confirm decades of personal observation, demonstrating the existence of significantly more racism than the state or national averages with US racial target of choice, Muslims at the top of the polls, a trend which is consistent from region to state to nation. Queenslanders are more prejudiced toward Aboriginal folks than Asians, a trend which is reversed in my region by a whisker. There are more equal opportunity haters in my neck of the woods it seems as there’s a scant couple of percent between the antipathy toward Indigenous folks, Asians and Jews.
% of Wide Bay respondents
Total QLD survey %
Total Australia survey %
Anti-Asian
36.4
27.9
23.8
Anti-Indigenous
35.8
29.0
27.9
Anti-Italian
17.0
12.7
11.0
Anti-British
8.5
7.5
7.8
Anti-Muslim
57.0
50.1
48.6
Anti-Semitic (Jewish)
33.9
23.5
23.3
Anti-Christian
14.5
9.0
9.7
Anti-Black African
–
–
27.0*
* Note: Responses for ACT, SA, Perth, NT and TAS only.
However, it doesn’t matter which shade of bigotry folks project, their carbon footprint is more related with their faith and participation or lack thereof in the modern idolatry of consumerism and its theoretical underpinnings in economic irrationalism.
Concerned about the carbon tax and its effect on your much abused budget? Are you not incensed you have voluntarily adopted a simpler less consumerist lifestyle for years and you will now be punished further by price rises because of the irresponsible behaviour of the rest of the wretches with whom you share these colonial shores? Gillard’s vaunted “educative” spanking effect from the carbon tax on consumer habits may be short-lived and very quickly, the population will resume its profligate ways, as with the GST, another notable government tax grab. We need a broader vision, with a widet more-effective brush, and not the the faux “Billy Tea Party” offered by Cory Bernardi, one must quickly add.
Here’s an idea to substitute for the carbon tax which would have a multiplier effect elsewhere, by encouraging holiday makers to less polluting relaxation.
End the cruise ship industry now – it is an anachronism which mainly benefits a tiny fraction of the population, the ruling elite. If Australia closed down all cruise ship industries, a good proportion of our carbon tax would be paid in advance. Noone would be screaming except rich boaties, cruise ship companies,.gluttonous tourists and their class allies, the politicians whom they pamper with campaign donations and dinners at yacht. Who *really needs* to go on a cruise ffs … end the cruise shipping industry now, do the planet and everyone but the rich and/or stupid and their enablers a favour. For those who simply must have a ‘cruise’, the ships can be permanently based ashore where waste can be disposed of properly and fuel impact removed. My favourite whiners against my stellar idea thus far are self-labelled greenies who have taken Alaskan cruises so they can say they’ve seen the result of the Exxxon Valdez oil spill disaster. These folks must do better. There’s plenty of room for productive extension also, by cutting back on defence force ship size and number, and on commercial shipping generally. At the very least, tightening of pollution regulations across the oceans would contribute greatly to the reduction of the human carbon AND pollution footprints.
For more positive climate change impact, consider this simple two pronged approach: (1) Lower the population by removing incentives for breeding by ensuring adequate pensions and care for aged folks, and (2) Educate women since educated women choose to breed less overall, “except for women who pursue the most advanced degrees. . Women with professional degrees and Ph.D.’s are slightly more likely to have had children than their counterparts with just master’s or bachelor’s degrees”.
Now, for some other climate saving ideas which anyone except the completely decrepit, lazy or unimaginative middle class twit can implement:
Climate savers #1 : Instead of *driving* to gym or sports club in your big shiny 4WD, walk or take a train; form a neighbourhood walking group
Climate savers #2 : Eat less, you corpulent middle class wankers
Climate savers #3: Don’t overbreed, it only viralises your existent pollution and ignorant consumerist mindset
Climate savers #4: If you really must breed, instead of buying little Georgina a puppy or the latest Nintendo, buy her a pet rock.
Climate savers #5: Instead of burning fossil fuels, burn politicians in a non-polluting furnace. Or use as mulch for your garden.
Climate savers #6: If there are no politicians left to feed the non-polluting furnace, throw in the farting cows. Consider drilling down the pollutant gas-producing food chain.
Climate savers #7: Surprise the husband and kids! experience the unexpected and stay HOME for the holidays. Talking with each other makes a novel, relaxing change so for added benefit, send your iPads, iPods and iPhones television, computers, wiis and xboxes on a holiday to a friend’s shed and/or for a jaunt through Australia Post snail mail so you are not tempted.
Climate savers #8: Instead of planning your next boastful debt to be for a below ground pool, plant a rainforest in your backyard.
Climate savers #9: Learn from 40,000 years of indigenous habitation of Australia – your white colonial consumerism and capitalism are unsustainable, planet and people unfriendly. Contrary to questionable popular beliefs, humans are more likely to survive as a species if they cooperate and live within the garden in balance rather than attempting to dominate and subdue it for the benefit of an insatiable ruling elite. Don’t vote against your own interests. The elite are relying on the fact that you have done this in the past.
Climate savers #10: Economic rationalism is irrational. Never trust a smiling politician or any other member of the ruling elite and if they are telling you to do something it is quite often something which they will not do themselves. Insist any politician or pundit who asks you to change your habits by going without something, practise what they preach and demonstrate how to do it themselves first. You might also remind them that carrots taste much better than sticks and are healthier for you and the planet too.
A US scientific study is pointing the finger at the global shipping industry as a major contributor to climate change.
The study has found that the one hundred thousand commercial ships which travel the world’s oceans emit almost half as much particle pollution as the world’s 600 million cars.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
And the lead author is calling for an improvement in the quality of shipping fuels.
In the past, ships running under flags of convenience have been exposed in reports like the Ships of Shame inquiry as being unsafe for crews and polluting the ocean.
Now scientists have put a figure on exactly how much air pollution is emitted by the world’s shipping fleet.
US-based scientist Daniel Lack, who works for a US government agency called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has found every year commercial ships emit 1 million kilograms of particle pollution into the air.
The cruise ship industry is largely a North American phenomenon, and more than 80 percent of the approximately seven million passengers traveling are North Americans. The cruise ship market has expanded slightly in the Mediterranean and very slightly in the Far East. In Europe there are a large number of smaller passenger vessel services operating in the domestic or car ferry markets, but these vessels tend to provide transportation rather than entertainment and tourism.
Given their lucrative ties to the United States market, it is hardly surprising that the major cruise lines all maintain their principal offices in the United States. For example, Norwegian Cruise Line Ltd. has its corporate headquarters in Miami and employs approximately 1200 personnel throughout the United States. Carnival Corporation, the largest cruise line company in the world, has several offices in the US, as well as personnel and properties scattered throughout the country. Carnival owns twelve cruise brands, including Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, and Windstar Cruises, all of which operate in North America. Royal Caribbean has its principal executive office in Miami.
The cruise line industry will exhibit strong growth throughout the next two decades. The average annual growth of the industry has been almost eight percent since 1980, and with the world fleet of 230 cruise ships operating at 90 percent capacity, there are no signs of this growth slowing. North America is the largest market, and surveys indicate that 56 percent of Americans want to take cruises, while only 11 percent have done so. The number of cruise line passengers worldwide is projected to triple to 15 million by 2020, according to one industry expert.
Experiencing the stupidity of high density high consumption human living on the high seas – New York on the waves!
When she launches in 2010, Allure of the Seas will share the title of the world’s largest and most revolutionary cruise ship with sister-ship Oasis of the Seas. An architectural marvel at sea, Allure of the Seas will span 16 decks, encompass 220,000 gross registered tons (GRT), carry 5,400 guests at double occupancy, and feature 2,700 staterooms. Allure of the Seas, and Oasis of the Seas, will be homeported at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Allure of the Seas will tout the cruise line’s new neighborhood concept of seven distinct themed areas, which will offer guests of every age the widest array of onboard vacation experiences that cater to their personal styles, preferences or moods. Guests will enjoy lush and tropical grounds open to the sky in Central Park, located in the center of the ship and spanning more than the length of a football field. Central Park will be lined with boutiques and specialty restaurants, ranging from casual to fine dining, and introduce balcony staterooms rising five decks above the storefronts and overlooking the park – one of a few new categories of onboard accommodations made possible by the ship’s revolutionary design.
For a quick digression, here’s what happened when bigots took flight against Muslims in Orange County, California, recently.
A quarter of Australians describe their personal attitude towards Muslims as negative or very negative, according to a detailed national survey on social cohesion and immigration.
People who are most likely to be highly intolerant towards Muslims include those who are over 65, educated to year 11, work in trades and intended to vote Liberal/National or independent.
Why not call out Beyonce, Usher, Mariah Carey, and so many other artists, all of whom have performed in Israel, a state which practices a form of apartheid worse than anything the South African apartheid government had ever done? In 1973, the United Nations General Assembly defined the crime of Apartheid as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” As Israel’s official policy privileges Jewish nationals over non-Jewish citizens, creating de facto and de jure discrimination against the indigenous Palestinian people, it is hard to dispute that this supposed “democracy” is in reality an apartheid state.
Jewish stabber not charged with murder. Other teens involved in murder of Arab man to stand trial for aggravated assault, obstruction of justice. Father of victim: ‘My son brutally murdered for speaking Arabic’
When urged at the start of January by Assange’s publisher to help him write his memoirs I said I was ready to assist, but only if I had strong editorial input and that no subject was off-limits. This, I was told, was not acceptable. Roughly at the same time our organisation started asking questions about Israel Shamir, a man accused of Holocaust denial and of being a close associate of Belarus’s autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko. Index is one of the founders of the Belarus Committee. Despite repeated but polite requests to WikiLeaks, our team was stonewalled, so we went public with our concerns.
Assange’s reported conspiracy remarks to Private Eye magazine about me and senior figures in the Guardian do not help his cause. With so many genuine adversaries, why seek more? His approach has reinforced a view that whistleblowing is the preserve of irresponsible eccentrics – playing into the hands of malign forces in the US seeking to prosecute him for “terrorism” or under the espionage act.
Thanks in large part to WikiLeaks, no matter how hard the authorities try, it will be impossible in future to prevent conscientious whistleblowers from passing on material that seeks to cast a light on the actions of the powerful – information that might otherwise remain secret. Due to the published documents, people around the world – notably in the Middle East and north Africa – have a better sense of what others thought of their autocratic leaders. All this is the positive legacy. The rest is soap opera or, dare I say it, Tinseltown.
Alice Bach, a biblical scholar and professor at Case Western Reserve University describes how Christian zionists assist Israeli zionists to appropriate Palestinian lands through biblical ‘cultural heritage’ tours to Israel while US [and other nations’ including Australias’] tax deductible donations are sent to illegal Israeli settlements. I’m reminded again how Christian zionist biblical interpretation aligns with fabricated zionist mythology.
The video above accompanies an article on the Institute for Palestine Studies site.
CUFI’s financing and budget are difficult to trace, although its gifts to settlements, particularly the $6 million (CUFI’s figure) to the settlement of Ariel, are widely publicized to indicate the organization’s deep commitment to the expansion of the State of Israel.
The US has signalled that it will be vetoing the resolution currently before the UN Security Council against Israeli settlement expansion, despite the resolution’s consistency with existing US policy and previous votes in the UN.
M J Rosenberg considers that this US veto “violates broader US interests”, is a function of US domestic policy and the power of the campaign finance from the ubiquitous Israel lobby is to blame:
This is from AFP’s report on what Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“We have made very clear that we do not think the Security Council is the right place to engage on these issues,” Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg told the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee.
“We have had some success, at least for the moment, in not having that arise there. And we will continue to employ the tools that we have to make sure that continues to not happen,” said Steinberg.
There is so much wrong with Steinberg’s statement that it is hard to know where to start.
First is the obvious. Opposition to Israeli settlements is perhaps the only issue on which the entire Arab and Muslim world is united. Iraqis and Afghanis, Syrians and Egyptians, Indonesians and Pakistanis don’t agree on much, but they do agree on that. They also agree that the US policy on settlements demonstrates flagrant disregard for human rights in the Muslim world (at least when Israel is the human rights violator).
Accordingly, a US decision to support the condemnation of settlements would send a clear message to the Arab and Muslim world that we understand what is happening in the Middle East and that we share at least some of its peoples’ concerns.
The settlement issue should be an easy one for the United States. Our official policy is the same as that of the Arab world. We oppose settlements. We consider them illegal. We have repeatedly demanded that the Israelis stop expanding them (although the Israeli government repeatedly ignores us). The administration feels so strongly about settlements that it recently offered Israel an extra $3.5bn in US aid to freeze settlements for 90 days.
It is impossible, then, for the United States to pretend that we do not agree with the resolution (especially when its language was carefully drafted to comport with the administration’s official position). So why will we veto a resolution that expresses our own views?
Steinberg says that “We do not think the Security Council is the right place to engage on these issues.”
Why not? It is the Security Council that passed all the major international resolutions (with US support) governing Israel’s role in the occupied territories since the first one, UN Resolution 242 in 1967.
He then adds, with clear pride that:
“We have had some success, at least for the moment, in not having that [the settlements issue] arise there.”
Very impressive. The United States has had no success whatsoever in getting the Netanyahu government to stop expanding settlements — to stop evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for ultra-Orthodox settlers — and no success in getting Israel to crack down on settler violence, but we have had “some success” in keeping the issue out of the United Nations.
The only way to resolve the settlements issue, according to Steinberg, “is through engagement through the parties, and that is our clear and consistent position”. Clear and consistent it may be. But it hasn’t worked. The bulldozers never stop.
Of course, it is not hard to explain the Obama administration’s decision to veto a resolution embodying positions that we support. It is the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is lobbying furiously for a US veto (actually not so furiously; AIPAC doesn’t waste energy when it knows that its congressional acolytes — and Dennis Ross in the White House itself — will do its work for them).
The power of the lobby is the only reason we will veto the resolution. Try to come up with another one. After all, voting for the resolution (or, at least, abstaining on it) serves US interests in the Middle East at a critical moment and is consistent with US policy.
But it would enrage the lobby and its friends who will threaten retribution in the 2012 election.
Simply put, our Middle East policy is all about domestic politics. And not even the incredible events of the past month will change that.
That is why US standing in the Middle East will continue to deteriorate. We simply cannot deliver. After all, there is always another election on the horizon and that means that it is donors, not diplomats, who determine US policy.
Yet the power of campaign finance and political pressure from the Israel lobby cannot be separated from the skewed system which facilitates corruption of imperial power. Other interests wilfully operate against people’s welfare within and without the empire besides the Israel lobby – big tobacco, big pharma, big banks, big chemicals, big oil and big defence are also empowered disproportionately by the US campaign finance and lobbying system.
A fundamental overhaul of the plutocratic US political system which presently permits the rich to rule courtesy of campaign bribery and extortionist lobbying would assist greatly the reassertion of balanced US foreign and domestic policy.
UPDATE
It seems the US is attempting to head off the UNSC settlements resolution by supplanting a mealy-mouthed statement.
The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.
But the Palestinians rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesday of Arab representatives and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution on Friday, according to officials familar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospect that the Obama adminstration will cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.
Still, the U.S. offer signaled a renewed willingness to seek a way out of the current impasse, even if it requires breaking with Israel and joining others in the council in sending a strong message to its key ally to stop its construction of new settlements. The Palestinian delegation, along with Lebanon, the Security Council’s only Arab member state, have asked the council’s president this evening to schedule a meeting for Friday. But it remained unclear whether the Palestinian move today to reject the U.S. offer is simply a negotiating tactic aimed at extracting a better deal from Washington.
Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, outlined the new U.S. offer in a closed door meeting on Tuesday with the Arab Group, a bloc of Arab countries from North Africa and the Middle East. In exchange for scuttling the Palestinian resolution, the United States would support the council statement, consider supporting a U.N. Security Council visit to the Middle East, the first since 1979, and commit to supporting strong language criticizing Israel’s settlement policies in a future statement by the Middle East Quartet.
. @PJCrowley for goodness sake, just support the UNSC resolution against Israeli settlements – mealy-mouthed statements aren’t sufficient! #
The guests: Rashid Khalidi, JPS editor and a professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University; Clovis Maksoud, the director of the Center for the Global South; and Samer Shehata, a professor of Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and Seymour Hersh.
The interviewees are: Mehran Kamrava, the interim dean of Georgetown University, Qatar; and Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.
While a radical regime in Egypt would threaten Israel directly but not America, a radical anti-Western regime in Saudi Arabia—which produces one of every four barrels of oil world-wide—clearly would endanger America as leader of the world economy.
‘Soon after the 9/11 attack, a long, typed anonymous letter was sent to Quantico Marine Base accusing the long-suffering Assaad, Zack’s victim in 1991, of plotting terrori…sm. This letter was received before the anthrax letters or disease were reported. The timing of the note makes its author a serious suspect in the anthrax attacks. The sender also displayed considerable knowledge of Dr. Assaad, his work, his personal life and a remarkable premonition of the upcoming bioterrorism attack.
After interviewing Assaad on Oct. 2, 2001, the FBI decided the letter was a hoax. While major newspapers noted that an anonymous letter had accused Dr. Assaad of bioterrorism, none followed up on it after his innocence was established. Zack’s name never surfaced again as one of the 30 suspects.
When the Washington Report asked Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Ph.D., a biological arms control expert at the State University of New York, if the allegations regarding Dr. David Hatfill now took the heat off Lt. Col. Philip Zack, she replied, “Zack has NEVER been under suspicion as perpetrator of the anthrax attack.”
It is hard to believe that, with his connection to Fort Detrick, Dr. Zack is not one of the 20 to 50 scientists under intense investigation.
When asked if Hatfill was part of the group that ganged up on Dr. Ayaad Assaad, Dr. Rosenberg answered, “Hatfill was NOT one of the persecutors of Assaad.”
She is convinced that the FBI knows who sent the anthrax letters but isn’t arresting him because he knows too much about U.S. secret biological weapons research and production. But she isn’t naming names. Neither is Dr. Assaad, who did not return calls from the Washington Report.’
Egypt will almost certainly return to its Arab base, liberate its foreign policy and restore its leadership role. That means a liberated Arab League and a constructive restoration of the Arab political structures that have deteriorated for the last four decades to the point of irrelevance.
The new Egypt will be a much-needed catalyst for change.
Alarming as it may sound for Israel and its Western backers (those who keep lecturing us about democracy but are the first to resist our struggle to achieve it), it actually is the right, peaceful and accurate course for stability and better relations of cooperation within and beyond the region.
Democracies in Tunisia and Egypt – and perhaps elsewhere – would be more likely to build relations with the US and the rest of the world on the basis of mutual respect and equality, not hegemony and exploitation in favour of Israel.
Israel would never choose to enter into serious negotiations with its Arab neighbours while they are weak, disunited and powerless. If we are at the beginning of a process that will reverse the situation that has existed until now, we have every reason to be optimistic about the region’s future.
In effect, the Obama administration was seeking to keep Mubarak in office as long as possible, and to keep his police state alive thereafter. For all the recent talk about supporting Egyptian democracy, what is ultimately vital to American policymakers is Egypt’s geopolitical alignment with the United States and its acquiescence in Israel’s regional hegemony — a policy Mubarak, and under him Suleiman, have long facilitated. These core interests could well be affected by a fully democratic Egypt that sought to play a role commensurate with its size and history in regional politics and that represented faithfully the wishes of its people (as the current democratic Turkish government does).
A democratic Egypt might challenge American support of Israel’s Middle Eastern nuclear monopoly, refuse to collude in Israel’s illegal and immoral siege of Gaza, actively back a genuine inter-Palestinian reconciliation, or otherwise assert its independence from American and Israeli policies. It might do so even while respecting the letter of the (highly unequal) peace treaty with Israel and existing accords with the U.S. Given the blinders worn by American policymakers, such an Egypt would be a policy headache in Washington on the level of that caused by all three major regional powers, Israel, Turkey and Iran.
