colonialism

January 28, 2011December 11, 2020

Freedom Dominoes Falling

From Tunisia, to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, people are rising up against the waning US empire’s puppet dictators while the US pays begrudging lip service to their struggle or like Biden, sacrifices the democratic aspirations of Egyptians to Israel and US geopolitical scheming (he means resources and militarisation). The price, once again for empire, is worth it? After all, these are only brown people who happen to be living where the resources which the US covets are situated. Several patronising US blogocrats of various shades of white supremacy have expressed less than admirable support for the courageous Egyptian people – surely these annoying foreign brown people should wait until the empire tells them it is convenient for them to pursue regime change, the government leaders they acquire after the revolution may be even more unappealing than their current torturous US allied villains. For neocon Laurent Murawiec afficionados, the dream of Egypt being the ‘prize’ for empire is surely now a nightmare.

Latuff Later, @PJCrowley tweeted “We are concerned that communication services, including the Internet, social media and even this #tweet, are being blocked in #Egypt.” #

The people’s demonstrations express heartfelt grassroots impatience to be rid of oppression – an impetus echoed also by Iranians attempting to dislodge their current repressive nexus. In Egypt,

At least four persons have died so far, 600 have been arrested and many more injured. Protests are flaring up in Cairo, 6th of October City, Suez, Mahalla al-Kubra and Alexandria.

“Young people are standing in the way of heavily armed armored vehicles and stopping them. People are genuinely frustrated,” Khaled al-Balashy, editor-in-chief of al-Badil newspaper told IPS.

“That was the first time I see people literally sacrificing their lives in face of police brutality,” al-Balashy said. “They think nothing worse could happen to them. This is unprecedented. And the changes will be equally unprecedented. It is a matter of time.”

Diaa Rashwan, an analyst with the semi-official al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies noted that the protests are now calling for regime change, not for the usual government benefits or reduction in food prices.

In contrast the people of Palestine continue to struggle against a despicable tripartite adversary which includes the leaders of the Palestine Authority collaborator, imposed upon them by the US for its own and its zionist crony’s benefit.

… the administration at least twice threatened to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority if elections were called and anyone other than Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad remained in power.

And it actively works with Israeli and Palestinian security services to deny the democratic will of Palestinians.

What is clear, then, is that Obama not only prefers the status quo, but the United States will actively subvert democracy in order to ensure that governments that will follow its policies remain in power.

If the administration has taken such an anti-democratic line with Palestinians, imagine how it must feel about the protests that have just exploded in Egypt, where substantive democratic change and a truly representative government would no doubt be far less amenable to US policies and strategic objectives regarding Israel and the war on terror than is Mubarak’s.

Faced with the overwhelming calumny and injustice of its oppressors evidenced in the Palestine Papers, dispossessed Palestinians are steadfast, continuing to insist on their rights.

For Amar al-Masaid, 28, history was something he lived with every day. “Our country was taken by force,” he said, amid jumbo boxes of cornflakes, tins of spam and chocolate Santa Clauses in his family’s shop. “They invaded us. They are a colonial power. We will never make any compromise. We will never sell our land. It would be better to stay with the Jews under occupation that give up our rights.”

His family had fled from Deir Aban in 1948; his father still has the deeds to the land they lost. “If you ask a little baby in these camps where their home is, they will answer you,” he said.

On cue, seven-year-old Dahoud and his sister Ranim, five, arrived to buy dried coconut, sent by their mother. Where did they come from? “Palestine,” said the boy; his sister whispered “Al-Maliha,” an Arab village south of Jerusalem until 1948, now home to a huge Israeli shopping mall and sports stadium.

According al-Masaid, the refugees live in a prison. Look around you, he said gesturing at the wall looming a couple of hundred yards away.

Nearby, 63-year-old Mousa al-Masaid, wearing a red-and-white keffiyeh, was passionately dismissive about the recent disclosures of negotiations. “I don’t care what they say on al-Jazeera,” he said. “All I care about is going back to my homeland. You want me to give up my land for peace? To hell with peace! I would rather live under the rule of monkeys than give up my land for peace.”

The Palestinian negotiators did not represent him, he said, and had no right to bargain away his homeland on his behalf.

Free Palestine!

At this moment

The offices of the Palestinian ambassador to the UK have been occupied by a group of students who are demanding new Palestinian national council elections.

At 1pm today, around a dozen Palestinian students from a number of British universities arrived at the Palestinian general delegation to the UK in Hammersmith, west London.

Although they had made an appointment to see the ambassador, Professor Manuel Hassassian, they arrived in large numbers and with computers and banners.

A spokesman for the students said they had been moved to stage a peaceful sit-in by the release of leaked Palestinian papers over the last few days.

“The documents confirmed what we had known all along — that they are out of touch with the people,” the spokesman said.

As well as calling for new elections, the students — from Oxford, SOAS, LSE, City and Westminster universities — are demanding a more inclusive political process that reflects and engages all Palestinians.

“We are ready to stay as long as necessary until our message has been received and understood,” he said.

The ambassador, whose office has been occupied, has asked the students to leave the room but has told them they are welcome to remain in the building.

“They told me they wanted to hold a sit-in in my office. I told them: ‘You’re welcome. This is your embassy. This is your home’,” he said.

Hassassian also said he had agreed to pass their demands on to the Palestinian government, but needed his office back if he was to relay them.

“We are being very hospitable and we hope that they respect our hospitality,” he said.

Two Metropolitan police officers entered the embassy a little after 4pm, and chatted to the ambassador and protesters.

The Palestinian students have issued a demand for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation to be restored “as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.

Egyptian slogans
What the herd is saying in Egypt
Egypt Unemployment Rate 2010 – 9.4%
African National Congress manual
Egypt: An Internet Black Hole
Palestinian students claim right “to participate in shaping of our destiny”
Guardian Journalist Arrested and Beaten Alongside Protesters in Egypt Secretly Records Ordeal ‘In Egypt, running battles between police and anti-government protesters continued into the early hours of Thursday morning. Police have arrested up to 1,200 people, including a number of journalists. Among them was Guardian reporter, Jack Shenker. He was arrested and beaten by plainclothes police on Tuesday night and shoved into a truck with dozens of other people. He managed to keep his dictaphone with him and recorded what was happening as the truck carried them outside of Cairo.’
Police alone can’t keep rulers in power. Egypt’s battle is on
The Palestine Papers and the “Gaza coup”
Egypt braces itself for biggest day of protests yet
Mohamed ElBaradei lands in Cairo: ‘There’s no going back’
State Dep’t says democracy is OK for Tunisia but not Egypt because of Israel
Emergency Response Plan: EGYPT
Egypt shuts down the internet on eve of protest as the world community gathers
Joe Biden says Egypt’s Mubarak no dictator, he shouldn’t step down…
Once again: new Khaled Said in Alexandria. Elsayed Belal was tortured to death by Egyptian police.
Counternarcotics and Law Enforcement Country Program: Egypt
What if this was Iran?
http://twitpic.com/3u0d48
Translated Excerpts from Egyptian Activists’ Action Plan
The Birth of the New Middle East
OPERATION EGYPT – ANONYMOUS PRESS RELEASE – 26/01/2011
The US role as Israel’s enabler : George Mitchell’s message means the United States is out of touch with Palestinian realities. by Mark Perry and Ali Abunimah
Streisand me! is a service by the proud people of the internet. This is a meeting place and resource page for everyone who want to participate in the creation of a censorship resistant internet.
Egypt: Internet down, police counterterror unit up
How to open blocked Facebook, Twitter and any website.
The Internet goes dark in Egypt
U.S. cables: Mubarak still a vital ally
Biden: see no good, hear no good, speak no good
Biden to Israelis: Mideast status quo unsustainable – ‘”The demographic realities make it difficult for Israel to be a Jewish homeland and a democratic country,” said Biden in his speech to foreign dignitaries, Israeli officials and students at Tel Aviv University. “The status quo is not sustainable.” ‘
Police alone can’t keep rulers in power. Egypt’s battle is on
Egyptian Activists’ Action Plan: Translated
The Internet goes dark in Egypt
Internet traffic graph
URGENT-Internet down all over Egypt | Urgent Call to Protest
Emergency Response Plan: EGYPT
Be careful what you wish for in Arab world – Cordesman drivel
Egypt: We are with you
SUBJECT: SENATOR KERRY’S MEETING WITH QATAR’S PRIME MINISTER
Israeli Minister: Mubarak regime will prevail in Egypt, despite protests
When Egypt turned off the internet
http://yfrog.com/h4fogp
Egypt, Internet cut off. A massacre will follow. Please help.
Egypt’s ElBaradei under house arrest
20 Egypt opposition members detained
http://yfrog.com/h2p5jdxj
Israel Fears Regime Change in Egypt
Interview with Hossam el-Hamalawy : Professor Mark LeVine interviews journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy on the situation in Egypt.
The devil they knew is a bogy no more – Paul McGeough quotes Ibish – why???
Muslim Brotherhood demands of Mubarak

@SultanAlQassemi Hassan Nafaa on Al Jazeera Arabic “The only replies from the govt were on the security front, no political concessions were offered” #Jan25 #

@SultanAlQassemi Hassan Nafaa “What we want is for President Mubarak to announce he will not run again for presidency or appoint his son as president” #Jan25 #

@SultanAlQassemi Hassan Nafaa “We want the parliament to be reformed. We want to hear Mubarak say ‘I understand your demands & we will comply'” #Jan25 #

@SultanAlQassemi FYI: Hassan Nafaa is Professor & Chairman of the Political Science department at Cairo University & anti-inheritance of power campaigner #

@SultanAlQassemi Poetry #Jan25 “O Security Officers, who will you protect when the Pashas flee Egypt like others have done? Carry two sheilds instead of one” #

@SultanAlQassemi Poetry of #Jan25 “And he wants to appoint his genius son for us as well? After 30 years!” Tamim Al Bargouthi poetry on Al Jazeera Mubasher. #

RT @ummhajarforpal: All known ways 2 stay online in #Egypt + HOWTO make gasmask http://wp.me/p16sn9-2QP #jan25 #bloggers Please RB & RT!!!

Internet working in most 5 star hotels??

Palestine / Israel Links

Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (20-26 January 2011)
Breaking: Settlers Kill Palestinian Near Iraq Burin
The rabbis of the devil
Obama must call Israeli settlements illegal
The Goldstone Report: more important than you think
THE PALESTINE PAPERS: MAKDISI – The Palestinian people betrayed 27Jan11
The EU and Israel committed themselves to establishing a partnership which provides for close political and mutually beneficial trade and investment relations together with economic, social, financial, civil scientific, technological and cultural cooperation.
The Palestine Papers: our red lines have been crossed
One doesn’t boycott the only free society in the Mideast -BHL rant

Wikileaks Links

WikiLeaks may put India in big trouble
Police arrest five over Anonymous WikiLeaks attacks
Pirate Party slams police over Anonymous arrests
WikiLeaks rival goes live as editors turn on Assange
09CAIRO1468, NDP INSIDER: MILITARY WILL ENSURE TRANSFER OF POWER
iewing cable 09CAIRO874, SCENESETTER: PRESIDENT MUBARAK’S VISIT TO

Other Links

January 26, 2011December 11, 2020

Black Fella White Fella

Palestine/ Israel Links

Israel asked Palestinian Authority to kill al-Aqsa commander
Secret Palestine documents expose sham “peace process”
Breaking: 11 year old child arrested in Nabi Saleh
Israel rejects Palestinian capitulation
Warcrim Tony Blair criticised for ‘Israeli bias’ & advocating “an apartheid-like approach”
‘Black Swan’ director against Israel boycott

Other Links

ElBaradei sensing an opportunity for 2011 presidential run? “If the Tunisians have done it, Egyptians should get there too,” the former UN nuclear watchdog chief told Der Spiegel for an interview to be published on Monday.
Egypt’s government forbids more protests
Tunisia asks Interpol to issue arrest warrant against ousted president – where’s the 1.5 tons of gold, Ben Ali?
Healthy man in a sick Europe
Dr. Helen Caldicott : If You Love This Planet : Sundays at 3 pm EST
France deplores protests in Egypt
Demonstrations were held in Cairo yesterday demanding the ouster of President Mubarak and calling for reforms. This was inspired by recent events in Tunisia and by the works of our talented Associate, Carlos Latuff.
Mubarak’s son, family fly out to UK: reports
The Egyptian consulate in Britain was more forthcoming than the UK Home Office (see 12.38pm) on the reports that Gamal Mubarak (son of Hosni) and his family have fled to London amid the protests, my colleague Sam Jones tells me. A spokesman said to him:

We deny it. I assume he is in Cairo, but he’s not in London. That’s the truth of the matter.

The spokesman, who said the reports had originated on the US-based website, Akhbar Al-Arab, would not comment on whether Gamal Mubarak had any plans to flee Egypt.”
Police crackdown in Tunisia meets resistance
Robertson accepts US law award with warning to back off Assange
Aborigines must join in debate, says Aunty Doreen Linda Burney

January 25, 2011December 11, 2020

Invasion Day 2011

On “Australia Day” many Australians project yobboish nationalism and drape themselves in the flag US-style, while the self-appointed elite sneer at the ‘bogans’ and ‘bevans’. Yet elitism is another form of the purulent racism with which Australia is infested, a miasm from the colonial aristocracy with roots in British class structure along with a more recent infection from the US ‘Me, me, me’ consumerist culture which values money, power and capitalist competition over community and cooperation.

At my place, we think of Australia Day as Invasion Day, the anniversary of the day our indigenous people saw white sails on the horizon, bringing Little England and its vapid social class structure, filthy diseases and other introduced species and destructive agricultural methods. This is my poem/song about the colonialists’ invasion of Australia.

Blow the Winds

Five years gone since my mate left home
he purchased his ticket to slavery
consigned him to another land
to wait for me in purgatory.
His pretty girl cried silken tears
sent to the gallows with cotton in her ears
they said she lied by the Rule of Law
born and bred a gypsy woman.

I’ll be going now, and I’ll see you soon
Sailing beneath the rising moon,
I’ll look for you in Melbourne town,
and there’s never been a heart so torn.

I stole an heiress in a field one morn
My heart’s in tatters and my hopes are gone,
In 1825, cold and wet and barely alive
I miss my woman and the babes she’s borne,
Fated to hang by a weeping judge,
Now sailing on the winds of scorn.

Blow the winds and fill the sails
take us to hell in New South Wales
The hulks are full in England
with many more like me
Bound to be Australians
with ironclad guarantees.

Me life’s not me own, I’m a Government man,
don’t remember when me term began,
the squatter’s chains rattle in me bones
to please the whims of the English throne.

Thrown into the white man’s cell
for laughin’ late and givin’ ‘em hell,
grabbed by the coppers, ripped from the land
no white fella can understand.
In 1985 another Murri suicides,
and there’s plenty more in Australia
of scoundrels such as me
Australia would be better off
if we’d hung on English trees.

Jin Jirrie

Palestine / Israel Links

Palestine Papers reveal limits of Israeli power
Condoleezza Rice: send Palestinian refugees to South America
US threat to Palestinians: change leadership and we cut funds
Livni: A lawyer ‘against law’? “Livni: I was the Minister of Justice. I am a lawyer… But I am against law – international law in particular. Law in general.”
Expelling Israel’s Arab population? Israeli negotiators, including Tzipi Livni, proposed “swapping” some of Israel’s Arab villages into a Palestinian state.
Rice: US army presence in Iraq protects Israel
Condoleezza Rice: send Palestinian refugees to South America
CFMEU & ASU support Marrickville
Palestine Papers: Why there will never be a State of Palestine
Boycott and I Choke
15 Hamas members arrested by PA
‘Haaretz’: it’s beginning to feel a lot like apartheid
US calls Israeli probe of flotilla raid ‘impartial’ – what a joke – the US tyrants back the Israeli tyrants’ lies
PA admits the memos are authentic; anger grows in the occupied territories and refugee camps across the region
Hamas initiates urgent consultations with Palestinian factions
Palestinian embassy to open in Ireland
@avinunu The criteria for obtaining US support is not whether you are democrat or dictator, but whether you are pro or anti US imperialism. #
Democracy under threat over EI funding, Dutch groups say
Lizzy Ratner: Detailing the Goldstone Report
Urge US Not to Veto Israeli Settlements Resolution
Possible source of Palestine papers leak

Other Links

Protesters take over Tahrir Sq
Obama may get power to shut down Internet without court oversight
From Nasserism to collaboration
Jan 25th Coverage.. the beginning (Part1) – photos
After Tunisia: Obama’s Impossible Dilemma in Egypt

January 24, 2011December 11, 2020

The Palestine Papers : Confirmation of Collaborative Rot

Al Jazeera’s ground-breaking scoop provides definitive confirmation of perfidy on the part of unrepresentative Palestinian ‘negotiators’ and of the falsity of the Israeli position. The Palestine Papers reveal that Israel shunned way more than generous settlement offers through which Palestinian leaders betrayed their people.

The Palestinian Authority proposed an unprecedented land swap to the Israeli government, offering to annex virtually all of the illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.

Not only did the Israeli government offer no concessions in return, but – as The Palestine Papers now reveal – it responded with an even more aggressive land swap: Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wanted to annex more than 10% of the West Bank (including the major settlements in Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel and elsewhere), in exchange for sparsely-populated farmland along the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The Israeli offer is documented in a Palestinian rendition of what’s colloquially called “the napkin map,” a rendering of which is revealed for the first time in The Palestine Papers.

Olmert met in mid-2008 with Mahmoud Abbas and showed him a map of the proposed swaps. Abbas was not allowed to keep a copy of the map, and so the 73-year-old Palestinian president had to sketch a copy by hand on a napkin.

And further:

The PA, in other words, never even really negotiated the issue; their representatives gave away almost everything to the Israelis, without pressuring them for concessions or compromise. Erekat seemed to realise this – perhaps belatedly – in a January 2010 meeting with [US president Barack] Obama’s adviser David Hale.

Erekat: Israelis want the two-state solution but they don’t trust. They want it more than you think, sometimes more than Palestinians. What is in that paper gives them the biggest Yerushalaim in Jewish history, symbolic number of refugees return, demilitarised state… what more can I give?

…
There is, in other words, seemingly no mutually acceptable policy for Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, and other major West Bank settlements within a two-state solution – a fact the Bush administration was willing to acknowledge in July 2008.

Rice: I don’t think that any Israeli leader is going to cede Ma’ale Adumim.

Qurei: Or any Palestinian leader.

Rice: Then you won’t have a state!

Rice may prove to be correct: Two and a half years later, the parties are no closer to a solution on settlements, and the Israeli government may be gearing up to issue a “massive” new round of housing permits for illegal settlers in the West Bank.

Along with Al Jazeera, the Guardian also intends publishing the documents which it says show

* The scale of confidential concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, including on the highly sensitive issue of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
* How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state.
* The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority.
* The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
* How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about Israel’s 2008-9 war in Gaza.

As well as the annexation of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestine papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land elsewhere.

Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City – the neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000 after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.

Desperately, the beleaguered Palestinian negotiators have attempted to ameliorate their irretrievable, exposed position:

Last night Erekat said the minutes of the meetings were “a bunch of lies and half truths”. Qureia told AP that “many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the … Palestinian leadership”.

However Palestinian former negotiator, Diana Buttu, called on Erekat to resign following the revelations. “Saeb must step down and if he doesn’t it will only serve to show just how out of touch and unrepresentative the negotiators are,” she said.

In Haaretz, after Erekat is exposed as a traitor to the Palestinian people by the Palestine papers, he has the temerity to call Lieberman’s ‘map‘ a joke.

The current Likud platform, recommended reading, evidences the fact that Israel under Nutanyahoo has no intention of ceding a Palestinian state despite any of his stern blither – and indeed why relinquish a inch when talk of peace talks can delay resolution indefinitely, creating a facade that ‘something’ is being done, while Israel continues to steal more Palestinian land and oppress Palestinians, with the unmitigated support of its supine neocoloniser, the US. Israel’s leaders’ whines about “peace and security” echoed by its US consorts are always a cover for ziofascist expansionism and ethnic cleansing.

Even the lack of a US veto of the forthcoming UN Security Council Resolution to censure settlement growth is unlikely to restrain the avaricious Israelis, for what punishment has been visited on them by western governments for their contravention of the previous 28 UNSC resolutions of which they are in breach?

Ali Abunimah, who is analysing the Palestine Papers for Al Jazeera and will be commenting on them further this week spells out the bottom line in Electronic Intifada:

“The cover has finally been blown on a ‘peace process’ where there has been no transparency, honesty or accountability to the Palestinian people by those who claimed to negotiate in their name. What saddened me most as I reviewed hundreds of documents was to see how Palestinian negotiators — with no mandate from the Palestinian people — viewed the basic rights and interests of the Palestinian people not as objectives to be secured, but as obstacles to be fudged or mere bargaining chips to be frittered away to secure a ‘deal’ that could save the skins of the Palestinian Authority at almost any price.”
…

“What we can discern immediately from these documents is that the US-brokered negotiations, especially under the Obama administration, can never lead to the restoration of Palestinian rights and that the two-state solution is basically dead. In the long term, we will have to ask how the peace process charade, revealed in these papers, was allowed to continue for so long as Israel continued its relentless colonization of Palestinian land and the Palestinian Authority that was supposed to be a step on the road to freedom become a sophisticated tool of continued Israeli occupation.”

Tariq Ali affirms:

Many PLO supporters in Palestine must be weeping as they watch al-Jazeera and take in the scale of the betrayal and the utter cynicism of their leaders. Now we know why the Israel/US/EU nexus was so keen to disregard the outcome of the Palestinian elections and try to destroy Hamas militarily.

The two-state solution is now dead and buried by Israel and the PLO. Impossible for anyone (even the BBC) to pretend that there can be an independent Palestinian state. A long crapulent depression is bound to envelop occupied Palestine, but whether Israel likes it or not there will one day be a single state in the region, probably by the end of this century. That is the only possible solution, apart from genocide.

Tariq is unrealistic here, I think – by demographic pressures alone, one state would come about much sooner than the end of this century.

Thus, once again, the battle comes down to a principled struggle for equal rights for all – the end of Israeli apartheid and jewish ethnonationalist hegemony in historic Palestine. Given the Palestine Papers’ affirmation of Israel’s bad faith in ‘peace’ negotiations and complicity of the US with Israel’s intransigence, the rationale for boycotts, divestments and sanctions of Israel is affirmed once again.