international law

May 18, 2011December 11, 2020

Yael Kahn : Solidarity with Palestine – From Nakba to Intifada

“Being in a solidarity movement with Palestinian people is a privilege. We are working against one of the biggest injustices in recent history and we are working also with wonderful people, people who in spite of all the constant Israeli attacks, have not lost their spirit.”

“I found out my indentity was linked to those of people I had never met.”

“Through BDS we get through to Israelis that their actions are not acceptable.”

Palestine /Israel Links

Toward a “Palestinian Spring”
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon invisible to international media
Israel broke international law by firing at unarmed protesters
Demand freedom for jailed PFLP leader Ahmad Sa’adat
Correcting the Historical Inaccuracies: Bibi vs Abu Mazen
South African scholar Na’eem Jeenah trapped at Istanbul airport after Israeli interrogation, confiscation of passport
Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel’s Policy in the Jordan Valley & Northern Dead Sea
Commissioner calls for unconditional opening of Gaza Strip crossings
Historian writes of ‘pleasure’ at murder of pro-Palestinian activist
A call from the Guardian’s Israel bureau
Activist Raphael Cohen in Jewish Chronicle libel win

Other Links

The ALP is being led by the nose by its fascist old guard moles. ‘For example, Australians participating in Anonymous operations, or perhaps even supporting WikiLeaks or other whistleblower organisations online, may now be legal targets of ASIO surveillance even though they are in Australia and not doing anything that relates to Australia’s security.’
Continued obstructions to — and even blatant denial of — the basic rights of indigenous peoples to land and forests, resulted in their ongoing marginalization and persistent poverty

May 15, 2011December 11, 2020

Remembering Al Nakba 2

Dramatic video shows Palestinians, Syrians entering Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
RT @avinunu: Reminder: UN Sec Council Res 497 (1981) declares Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan to be “null & void” http://is.gd/4DDQQ5
Interactive map of Palestine villages destroyed in Nakba

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces began in late 1947, so that by 15 May 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had already been expelled from their villages and cities before a single soldier from any Arab army had intervened. The exodus from, for example, Jaffa began in early 1948 after Zionist terrorists belonging to the Stern Gang set off a massive car bomb destroying the Jaffa municipality building on 4 January (this is all well-documented in books by right-wing Israeli historian Benny Morris, among others). Many villages in the north of Palestine were also depopulated around that time.

Rightwing group publishes Nakba denial booklet
Occupation & Nakba: Interview with Ariella Azoulay & Adi Ophir
New video shows Israeli soldiers firing as mass marchers enter Golan
Pro-Palestinian rallies turn deadly on Israel’s borders : the ABC Radio Australia should be ashamed of its bias toward the zionist entity in this zioshillery.
Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Haifa exposed
Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine by Walid Khalidi

‘Looking at what was happening on the ground during December 1947-15 May 1948 was teh first track we followed in examining the Israeli version of the events of this period; the second track was to challenge the Israeli lie of evacuation orders head on. If the orders were broadcast as the government of Israel, its top leadership and the Kimches et al. insisted, and if these orders reached hundreds of villages and a dozen towns causing their evacuation by hundreds of thousands, surely some tract or echo of these orders should be on record. The obvious place to look was the back files of the Near East monitoring stations of the British and American governments (the BBC Cyprus listening post and the CIA-sponsored Foreign Broadcast Information Service), both of which covered not only all the radio stations in the Near East, but also the local newspapers as well. I therefore checked the BBC monitoring archives at the British Museum, London, and published the result in my article “Why Did the Palestinians Leave?” (Middle East Forum July 1959). Not only was there no hint of any Arab evacuation order, but the Arab radio stations had urged the Palestinians to hold on and be steadfast whereas it was the Jewish radio stations of the Haganah and the Irgun and Stern Gang which had been engaged in incessant and strident psychological warfare against the Arab civilian population.’

Cheering Netanyahu’s Intransigence
Excellent history of Herzl’s zionism and British scheming: Victor Kattan “From Coexistence to Conquest”
The Population Transfer Committee: November 1937
By the close of 1937, the JNF-linked Jewish Agency had established the Population Transfer Committee, and in 1940, director of the JNF Lands Department Yosef Weitz wrote:

It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples.… If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us … There is no room for compromises … There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them, save perhaps for Bethlehem, Nazareth and old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe … For this goal funds will be found … And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.[89]

Land Without a People – by Michael Palumbo

‘There is no hope that this new Jewish state will survive,
to say nothing of develop, if the Arabs are as numerous as
they are today.” So spoke Menahem Ussishkin, at 75, one of
the oldest and most respected Zionist leaders. His audience
on the afternoon of 12 June 1938 was the Executive Commit-
tee of the Jewish Agency, which was considering a plan by
the British administration to divide Palestine between
Arabs and Jews. For decades there had been strife between
the two ethnic groups in the mandate territory and now the
British administration was considering partition as the
best way to end the conflict between the Jewish colonists
and the indigenous Arab population. But partition would
leave over 200,000 Arabs in the proposed Zionist state, and
the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine was
grappling with the problem of how best to get rid of them.

None of the members of the Executive disagreed with
Ussishkin when he stated: ‘The worst is not that the Arabs
would comprise 45 or 50 per cent of the population of the
new state but that 75 per cent of the land is owned by
Arabs.’ This land was desired for the waves of Jewish immi-
grants who would populate the Jewish state. There were many
other reasons why the Zionists wished to get rid of the
Arabs. Ussishkin claimed that with a large Arab population
the Jewish state would face enormous problems of internal
security and that there would be chaos in government. ‘Even
a small Arab minority in parliament could disrupt the
entire order of parliamentary life.’

The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement By Itzhak Galnoor

In late 1937, a Population Transfer Committee was established in the Jewish Agency to prepare material for the hearings of the Woodhead commision. The main document suggested two goals: reducing the Arab population in the territory intended for the Jewish state, and freeing agricultural land for Jewish settlement. I talso contained a detailed plan for the voluntary transfer of about 100,000 Arab farmers to the Gaza district, Transjordan, and Syria. The committee found it very difficult to reach clear recommendations and made do with the general declaration that “the transfer of Arab population on a large scale is a precondition for establishing the state.”

A Critique of Benny Morris by Nur Masalha

Video: Tel Aviv exhibit features testimony by Nakba perpetrators

The Common Archive aims “to create an audio-visual online archive of Jewish executor’s testimonies of the 1948 crimes with cross references to testimonies of Palestinian refugees and other historical visual data (maps, photos, etc).”

Palestine / Israel Links

Palestine Papers: Why I blew the whistle Ziyad Clot:

The “peace negotiations” were a deceptive farce, whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU capitals. Far from enabling a negotiated fair end of the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process has deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far for preserving the land on which to build a State, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, proved to be instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions amongst Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most. Last but not least, these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the Palestinian people: the 7 million-Palestinian refugees. My experience over those 11 months spent in Ramallah confirms in fact that the PLO, given its structure, was not in a position to represent all Palestinian rights and interests.

Israelis attack Palestinian funeral
Palestinian & jewish voices speak at Sydney conference for BDS against Israeli occupation & apartheid
Israel is not an island : The Arab Revolution is knocking at Israel’s door
Australia, where ‘human rights’ festivals ban protest art against Israeli oppression
Bloody Sunday as Israel kills 21 in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria
Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk asks court to cancel his ‘Jewish’ status
Arab Spring headaches for Barack Obama : “When Israel kills demonstrators is that the same as when Syria or Libya does the same?”

Other Links

Australia is now in the business of turning away refugees.
The “dodgy dossier” : the truth will out –

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq’s weapons programme was drawn up “to make the case for war”, flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister’s chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: “We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care.”

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government’s claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs needs to be Indigenous
Existence, Validity, Recognition :

Recognising Indigenous Australians as the first Australians is set to become next great debate on the national agenda. Acknowledged as a “Once in 50 year opportunity” by Prime Minister Julia Gilard it is with reserved optimism and nervous anticipation I, like many Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians await the 2011 government proposal and subsequent 2013 Referendum. With only 8 of the past 44 constitutional amendments being successful, it will take a movement at the ballot boxes reminiscent of the 1967 Referendum in which more than 90% of Australians voted in favor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders being recognised as Australian citizens.

May 9, 2011December 11, 2020

The Potential for Neoliberalism in a Hypothetical Palestinian State

Further to the existent and potential neoliberalism (formalisation of bantustan economy) in any incipient Palestinian state is the role that state of bantustans would play in the predatory US regional strategic plan as it counters the ‘arab spring’. Since Nutanyahoo doesn’t have the political capital or intention to offer a viable sovereign Palestinian state, the possibility for such is strictly hypothetical.

As more countries recognise a Palestinian state prior to another proposed declaration of same in September, Israeli politicians have moved to counter it with plans for annexation. However, if the OPT or parts thereof are annexed, Israel will have institutionalised apartheid systemically, highlighting the existing Palestinian bantustans and the two tiered racist zionist entity where non-jews are discriminated against by more than 20 laws. At that point, Israel will become unsustainable to the point of complete self-delegitimisation. The struggle will then be firmly focussed on equal rights for all, and the ethical nature of and necessity for BDS, boycotts, divestments and sanctions will be affirmed even more strongly.

Related Links

The PA and the privatization of Palestine : Ali Abunimah
Ehud Barak acknowledges the impact of BDS
Palestine in the Middle East: Opposing Neoliberalism and US Power
Leila Khaled : ‘“We shouldn’t believe the imperialists that they can make a better world. It’s only the working class that can make the world much more possible to live in without injustice and having our freedom. When the working class gets its freedom in any country, it means that it is building a better future for the generations to come.”
Neoliberalism as Liberation
Awakening: Liberal American rabbinical students are turning away from Zionism, sometimes with disgust
Right-wing group to teachers: Say no to doves
Hollow ‘reconciliation’ in Palestine Ali Abunimah :

Hamas has long signalled its desire to move away from armed struggle toward purely political means – this is the essence of its proposed hudna, or long-term truce, with Israel. It is of course possible to defend the legitimate and universal right to armed resistance against occupation, while choosing not to exercise it. “Where there is occupation and settlement, there is a right to resistance. Israel is the aggressor,” Meshaal told The New York Times on May 5, “But resistance is a means, not an end.”

Yet to choose different means, a movement has to have a viable political strategy and a clear definition of its ends. Hamas has failed to articulate, or to rally the Palestinian people around either. Instead its strategy appears to be simply to sign on to the inherently unjust, and infeasible “two-state solution” – and hope for admission to “the peace process”.

Richard Falk calls for listing Palestine as LDC under UN framework

Other Links

Nir Rosen’s excellent discussion of state terrorism: Who Cares About Osama
Osama bin Laden mission agreed in secret 10 years ago by US and Pakistan

May 3, 2011December 11, 2020

Holding to Human Rights in Marrickville

Fiona Byrne keeps the faith on the universal relevance of human rights and the oppression of Palestinian people.

I am proud to have been one of five Greens and four ALP councillors on Marrickville who took the global message to local government.

We believe that we represent citizens who would not want their money being used to support the on-going dispossession of the Palestinian people.

We led Marrickville into support of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, a grassroots movement, aimed at pushing the Israeli government to comply with international humanitarian law.

Rupert Murdoch, Barry O’Farrell, and, sadly, some of the leaders of the Labor Party felt differently.

They clearly believe that Australia is best served by the cone of silence on Middle Eastern policy that pervades our politics and our media, whether it is Israel, Syria or any other country where the struggle for human rights continues.

We do not agree.

I’m proud to have recently heard the story from my parents’ homeland of 12 department store workers in Dublin who in the mid-’80s went on strike for two-and-a-half years for the right to not handle goods from apartheid South Africa.

Initially they were vilified, but as the sanctions movement grew their courageous stand gave hope and strength to those fighting for their human rights half a world away.

Relevant Links

BARGHOUTI: Setting the record straight on BDS –

The Marrickville Council was on the right side of history when it first chose to endorse the global BDS campaign. It remains so by insisting on Palestinian rights, despite the tactical setback. Brave Australians had done the same when responding to the calls from the oppressed South African majority under apartheid. We expect no less from conscientious Australians today in response to our urgent appeal for effective solidarity. I have no doubt that one day commentators and activists will mark Marrickville’s decision as the true beginning of mainstreaming BDS in Australia and of finally standing up to Israel’s lobby and for the rights of Palestinians.

Palestine debate widens despite council BDS backdown

The campaign against Marrickville Council’s support for BDS shows just how worried apologists for Israel are about the growing global support for an ethical local policy towards Israel based on its treatment of Palestinians.

Palestine / Israel Links

Facebook campaigns launched for Palestinian boycott of Israeli products
Israeli Foreign Minister urges boycott of PA – Hamas government

The developments on Wednesday represent an unambiguous failure of Israel’s long-standing policy of ‘divide and rule’. It was in pursuit of such a strategy that Israel began to fund Hamas in the late seventies and eighties, in order to undermine the secular Palestinian leadership of the PLO. This strategy appears to have backfired dramatically, in a similar fashion to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which resulted in the creation of the other asymmetric threat on Israel’s borders, the Shi’ia Hizbollah movement.

In retrospect, such a development was always likely in view of the utter intransigence of Israeli negotiators revealed by the Palestinian Papers. The leaked documents reveal a supine, if not desperate, Palestinian negotiating team making sweeping concessions on refugees right to return, the legal status of the Temple Mount and illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, to no avail. Such obduracy, arguably far in excess of what hardline Zionist Vladamir Jabotinsky was recommending in his doctrine of the Iron Wall, recalls Golda Meir’s stance towards Anwar Sadat in 1971, a stance that led inexorably to the Yom Kippur War.

Gaza is a symbol of occupation, thanks to Israel : Israel’s Pavlovian response to Palestinian reconciliation, which included the usual threats of boycott, is the result of the ingrained anxiety of people who no longer control the process

Bassem Tamimi: “Our destiny is to resist”

The occupation is continuous in Israeli society and this is why they lose — because they try to force us to accept them as an occupier, and that will never happen. We don’t have any problem with Jewish people. Our problem is with Zionism. We don’t hate them on the other side; we simply demand that they end the occupation of their minds. The separation between us is between different ways of thinking, not between land. If we change our ways of thought and remove the mentality of occupation from our minds — not just from the land — we can live together and build a paradise.
…
The army is determined to push us toward violent resistance. They realize that the popular resistance we are waging with Israelis and internationals from the outside, they can’t use their tanks and bombs. And this way of struggling gives us a good reputation. Suicide bombing was a big mistake because it allowed Israel to say we are terrorists and then to use that label to force us from our land. We know they want a land without people — they only want the land and the water — so our destiny is to resist. They give us no other choice.

April 29, 2011December 11, 2020

Palestinians Talk About Unity

Responding to popular pressure from Palestinian civil society, including a growing youth movement, the two main rival Palestinian factions, Fateh and Hamas, have agreed to an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal after years of failed attempts at ending their divisions. Although details of the agreement have yet to be made public, it reportedly calls for an interim unity government and elections within a year. Join us as we examine the significance of this development, and the ramifications it might have on the overall political situation just a month before Israeli PM Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress.

GUESTS:

Ali Abunimah is an analyst & media commentator, as well as the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Lina Al-Sharif lives in Gaza where she is a senior English Literature student at the Islamic University in Gaza as well as an active blogger and writer.

Fadi Quran lives in the West Bank and is a coordinator within various youth movements as well as the founder of an alternative energy startup. A graduate of Standford University, Quran is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

Yousef Munayyer (Guest Moderator) is the Executive Director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center in Washington D.C.

Unity is an illusion unless it is representative of the call of Palestinian civil society themselves, as Ali says, for the end of occupation and apartheid, for equal rights for Palestinians in Israel and recognition of right of Palestinians to return to their lands. The unity the unelected ‘leaders’ can offer is worthless if it isn’t steadfast to the people’s vision.

The agreement signed last night between Fatah and Hamas does not represent unity. The reconciliation agreement represents a move to appease growing popular movements on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank which are demanding real unity, one that might not even involve the PA and Hamas, in order to combat Israeli occupation.

Declaring an Independent Bantustan

The drive for recognition is led by Salam Fayyad, the appointed Prime Minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA). It is based on the decision made during the 1970s by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to adopt the more flexible program of a “two-state solution.” This program maintains that the Palestinian question, the essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, can be resolved with the establishment of an “independent state” in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. In this program Palestinian refugees would return to the state of “Palestine” but not to their homes in Israel, which defines itself as “the state of Jews.” Yet “independence” does not deal with this issue, neither does it heed calls made by the 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel to transform the struggle into an anti-apartheid movement since they are treated as third-class citizens.

Israeli leaders reject Palestinian unity deal

Khaleda Jarrar, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, told Al Jazeera that the latest development represented an opportunity for Palestinians.

“I think it is a good opportunity for reconciliation, especially with the Arab revolutions around and the Palestinian youth movement which has started to pressure both Fatah and Hamas to really put an end to the divisions.

“This time we hope that it will be a real reconciliation, it will work because of the changes [in the region] and the internal pressure from the Palestinian people,” she said.
…
But Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, stressed he would retain control over foreign policy.

He added that he remained ready to talk peace with Netanyahu if Israel halted its settlement construction on occupied lands and said the caretaker government would not include Hamas activists.

“The people will be independents, technocrats, not affiliated with any factions,” Abbas told a group of Israeli businessmen and retired security chiefs.

He said the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which he heads and to which Hamas does not belong, would still be responsible for “handling politics, negotiations”.

“Dislike, agree or disagree (with Hamas) — they’re our people. You, Mr Netanyahu (are) our partner,” Abbas, speaking in English, told his Israeli audience.

Palestinian Unity: Dividends and Discontents

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted swiftly and furiously to reports of Palestinian reconciliation by reiterating what he had said a month ago: that Abbas could not have peace with both Israel and Hamas.

If Bibi meant this as a threat, it seems an odd one, since he has steadfastly refused all moves toward peace. His tactic has been to ensure that settlement construction continues, thus making it politically impossible for Abbas, in the wake of Obama’s determination to obtain a freeze on settlements, to return to talks and then shedding crocodile tears for the Palestinians “refusal” to come and talk to him.

This tactic has killed a peace process that, after twenty years of settlement expansion and massive tightening of the occupation, was already on life support. So, Bibi essentially gave Abbas a choice between peace with Hamas and no peace at all. Abbas, then, made the only call he could.

Erekat on unity: respect our democracy

“I have met Netanyahu in Washington and in Jerusalem, and it led to nothing,” Abbas said. “All he wants to talk about is security. I understand the Israeli concern, but I won’t have Israeli forces in the Palestinian state. Netanyahu wanted an Israeli army in the West Bank for another forty years. That means the occupation continues.”
…
Among other Palestinian officials present were former head of security Jibril Rajoub, who was rarely seen together with Abu Mazen in recent years, and former chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who added his own comment to questions from the Israeli media regarding the reconciliation agreement. “This is about peace, but also about democracy,” he said. “We respect the democratic choices of the Israeli people. We ask Israel to respect ours.”

Among those present on the Israeli side were former head of Mossad, Danny Yatom, former Labor Minister Moshe Shahal, buisness tycon Idan Ofer and Adina Bar Shalom daughter of Shas leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

“I’m glad I came to Ramallah today,” said Bar Shalom. “I feel that we have a partner.”

Alistair Crooke looks behind Israel’s ‘security’ hasbara and tilt against a Palestinian state:

If a Palestinian state threatens to undermine Zionism in these ways, it is not surprising that it is not on offer. It is simply implausible to expect it come about through Palestinians negotiating with no bargaining power — because to create a sovereign and legitimate state would require that the Palestinians force Israel to give something which many see not to be in their interest to concede: The abandonment of Zionism. Any concession in this area (of Zionism) inevitably opens a can of worms and the risk of igniting civil war between the various strands of Zionism. It suits Israel better to have a Palestinian “state” without borders, so they can keep negotiating about borders and count on the induced uncertainty to maintain Palestinian and international quiescence.

Fatah and Hamas: Tectonic plates start to shift : A future environment composed of free Egyptians, Jordanians and even possibly Syrians could well fashion Israel’s borders
It’s my fault that Hamas is now working with Fatah?
Netanyahu presses for U.S. action over Fatah-Hamas deal Nutanyahoo using desperate rhetoric:

“Israel would not recognize any government in the world that included members from Al-Qaida,” Netanyahu said.

Israel can redeem itself by recognizing a Palestinian state

Palestine / Israel Links

Egyptian youth call for million-man marches to support Palestinians
Egypt FM: Gaza border crossing to be permanently opened
Palestinian………….. I was born
14.2% of the Palestinian work force was employed in settlements in 2010.
Sign the petition to end tax deductible ‘charity’ contributions to illegal Israeli settlements
World Federation of Trade Unions statement on May Day, 2011
New Israeli plan to build 386 settlement units in Sheikh Jarrah revealed
Israel’s mythological backbone unmasked: ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ by Shlomo Sand
Israeli rabbi calls for Israel’s Palestinian citizens to be “encouraged” to move to Saudi Arabia and Libya
Hasbaroid Kantor: “No other nation faces calls for its destruction or dismantlement, justifies the killing of its citizens or faces a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. These people clearly single out the only Jewish State in the world and this is intolerable.”
#BDS Victory: Swedish Pension Funds call on Motorola to stop profiting from Israel’s occupation
#BDS: Appel BDS Maroc
Campus BDS Heating Up This Spring!
Israeli forces fired on an area east of Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza Thursday evening, injuring four, including a woman and two children
Oh how lovely zionism is – Israel demolishes home of Palestinian-Israeli, then bills him $150,000 for the cost of demolition.

Syria Links

Syria: “The Revolution is Continuing in Daraa; Are You With Us?”
Hundreds quit ruling party in protest over crackdown
The Man behind “Syria Revolution 2011? Facebook-Page Speaks Out

Libya Links

GOODIES AND BADDIES

The idea of “humanitarian intervention” which is behind the decision to attack in Libya is one of the central beliefs of our age.

It divides people. Some see it as a noble, disinterested use of Western power. Others see it as a smokescreen for a latter-day liberal imperialism.

Shahin and Juan Cole, The Women’s Movement in the Middle East

Other Links

You People Engaging article on Pakistan and identity by Robin Yassin-Kassab
Long live the Queen?

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics

I recommend the views of a philosopher friend, Peter Slezak, in Australia. A few years ago he surprised his left-liberal friends by voicing support for keeping the Queen. Royalty serves a useful purpose, he said: the pomp and ceremony helps undermine respect for state authority.

Superman now ashamed to speak up for America
“The former head of an agency accused of torture and human rights abuses is expected to be a guest at Friday’s royal wedding, the Guardian has learned.
Sheikh Khalifa Bin Ali al-Khalifa is a former head of Bahrain’s National Security Agency (NSA) and will attend the wedding in his role as the current Bahraini ambassador to London.”
“Royal Wedding” Showcard Cartoon
Fascism in the US : Bradley Manning Protest video stirs up White House
UK fascism with a feudal flavour RT @alexlobov: Thoughtcrime! RT @brownisthecolor Police arrest activists across UK ahead of #RoyalWedding for THINKING abt protesting
We cannot have a divide between Aboriginal people being created by the media in the interests of Government. Two Aboriginal people are not the embodiment of Aboriginal people, they are two Aboriginal people. People, who due to their profiles, are having what should be a personal issue dragged out in the public eye.