Tuesday, November 6, 2007
indymedia, Portland
excellent analyses of a day in the life of the corporate media and their power and willingness to reconstruct the reality of events on the front line to suit their own agenda. It is ESSENTIAL that we all look beyond the mainstream media to other sources of information and opinions to get a more relevant understanding of the political and economic landscapes unfolding around us.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
March On Freedom
the waihekeindymedia crew were fully present at Saturdays march from Aotea Square to Mt.Eden Prison to protest the imprisonment of 18 activists from acrooss a broad range of cultural and political backgrounds.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Letters From Beirut: The War of 33
Letters From Beirut: The War of 33 (33 relates to the 33 days and nights that Beirut and Southern Lebanon were exposed to catastrophic aerial and ground assault by Israel ) it is an intimate, personal and powerful telling of the story of the 2006 war in Lebanon. A series of letters written by Hanady Salman - a mother living through the war in Beirut - carve a narrative arc through the intense and haunting images of conflict. She tells the stories of her family and the people she lives the war with -- the refugees, the wounded, and the everyday Lebanese, struggling to maintain their sanity and their humanity during a time of war. Letters From Beirut is more than a document of a particular historical experience. What emerges is a universal story -- a complex picture of love, pain, resistance and survival in the face of uncertainty and violence.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
don't throw rocks at Israeli military bulldozers...
Palestinian Youth Crushed to Death by Israeli Bulldozer
Meanwhile in the Occupied Territories, a sixteen-year old Palestinian boy died Thursday after being run over by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Mahmud Kayed was crushed to death when the bulldozer sped towards a group of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at invading Israeli troops.
courtesy www.democracynow.org
put $100 bucks that ABSOLUTELY no-one will be held accountable of yet just one more murder of a Palestinian child by the second most powerful army in the world.
Meanwhile in the Occupied Territories, a sixteen-year old Palestinian boy died Thursday after being run over by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Mahmud Kayed was crushed to death when the bulldozer sped towards a group of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at invading Israeli troops.
courtesy www.democracynow.org
put $100 bucks that ABSOLUTELY no-one will be held accountable of yet just one more murder of a Palestinian child by the second most powerful army in the world.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Chomsky on Gaza
Guillotining Gaza
by Noam Chomsky
Information Clearing House: The death of a nation is a rare and somber event. But the vision of a unified, independent Palestine threatens to be another casualty of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, stoked by Israel and its enabling ally the United States.
Last month's chaos may mark the beginning of the end of the Palestinian Authority. That might not be an altogether unfortunate development for Palestinians, given US-Israeli programmes of rendering it nothing more than a quisling regime to oversee these allies' utter rejection of an independent state.
The events in Gaza took place in a developing context. In January 2006, Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced to be free and fair by international observers, despite US- Israeli efforts to swing the election towards their favourite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But Hamas won a surprising victory.
The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way was severe. With US backing, Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza, withheld funds it was legally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip.
The United States and Israel made sure that Hamas would not have a chance to govern. They rejected Hamas's call for a long-term cease-fire to allow for negotiations on a two-state settlement, along the lines of an international consensus that Israel and United States have opposed, in virtual isolation, for more than 30 years, with rare and temporary departures.
Meanwhile, Israel stepped up its programmes of annexation, dismemberment and imprisonment of the shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West Bank, always with US backing despite occasional minor complaints, accompanied by the wink of an eye and munificent funding.
Powers-that-be have a standard operating procedure for overthrowing an unwanted government: Arm the military to prepare for a coup. Israel and its US ally helped arm and train Fatah to win by force what it lost at the ballot box. The United States also encouraged Abbas to amass power in his own hands, appropriate behaviour in the eyes of Bush administration advocates of presidential dictatorship.
The strategy backfired. Despite the military aid, Fatah forces in Gaza were defeated last month in a vicious conflict, which many close observers describe as a pre-emptive strike targeting primarily the security forces of the brutal Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Israel and the United States quickly moved to turn the outcome to their benefit. They now have a pretext for tightening the stranglehold on the people of Gaza.
'To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole,' writes international law scholar Richard Falk.
This worst-case scenario may unfold unless Hamas meets the three conditions imposed by the 'international community' - a technical term referring to the US government and whoever goes along with it. For Palestinians to be permitted to peek out of the walls of their Gaza dungeon, Hamas must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements, in particular, the Road Map of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations).
The hypocrisy is stunning. Obviously, the United States and Israel do not recognise Palestine or renounce violence. Nor do they accept past agreements. While Israel formally accepted the Road Map, it attached 14 reservations that eviscerate it. To take just the first, Israel demanded that for the process to commence and continue, the Palestinians must ensure full quiet, education for peace, cessation of incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other organisations, and other conditions; and even if they were to satisfy this virtually impossible demand, the Israeli cabinet proclaimed that 'the Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians.'
Israel's rejection of the Road Map, with US support, is unacceptable to the Western self-image, so it has been suppressed. The facts finally broke into the mainstream with Jimmy Carter's book, 'Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,' which elicited a torrent of abuse and desperate efforts to discredit it.
While now in a position to crush Gaza, Israel can also proceed, with US backing, to implement its plans in the West Bank, expecting to have the tacit cooperation of Fatah leaders who will be rewarded for their capitulation. Among other steps, Israel began to release the funds - estimated at $600 million - that it had illegally frozen in reaction to the January 2006 election.
Ex-prime minister Tony Blair is now to ride to the rescue. To Lebanese political analyst Rami Khouri, 'appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.' Blair is the Quartet's envoy only in name. The Bush administration made it clear at once that he is Washington's envoy, with a very limited mandate. Secretary of State Rice (and President Bush) retain unilateral control over the important issues, while Blair would be permitted to deal only with problems of institution-building.
As for the short-term future, the best case would be a two-state settlement, per the international consensus. That is still by no means impossible. It is supported by virtually the entire world, including the majority of the US population. It has come rather close, once, during the last month of Bill Clinton's presidency - the sole meaningful US departure from extreme rejectionism during the past 30 years. In January 2001, the United States lent its support to the negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that nearly achieved such a settlement before they were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
In their final Press conference, the Taba negotiators expressed hope that if they had been permitted to continue their joint work, a settlement could have been reached. The years since have seen many horrors, but the possibility remains. As for the likeliest scenario, it looks unpleasantly close to the worst case, but human affairs are not predictable: Too much depends on will and choice.
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest for Global Dominance.
by Noam Chomsky
Information Clearing House: The death of a nation is a rare and somber event. But the vision of a unified, independent Palestine threatens to be another casualty of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, stoked by Israel and its enabling ally the United States.
Last month's chaos may mark the beginning of the end of the Palestinian Authority. That might not be an altogether unfortunate development for Palestinians, given US-Israeli programmes of rendering it nothing more than a quisling regime to oversee these allies' utter rejection of an independent state.
The events in Gaza took place in a developing context. In January 2006, Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced to be free and fair by international observers, despite US- Israeli efforts to swing the election towards their favourite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But Hamas won a surprising victory.
The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way was severe. With US backing, Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza, withheld funds it was legally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip.
The United States and Israel made sure that Hamas would not have a chance to govern. They rejected Hamas's call for a long-term cease-fire to allow for negotiations on a two-state settlement, along the lines of an international consensus that Israel and United States have opposed, in virtual isolation, for more than 30 years, with rare and temporary departures.
Meanwhile, Israel stepped up its programmes of annexation, dismemberment and imprisonment of the shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West Bank, always with US backing despite occasional minor complaints, accompanied by the wink of an eye and munificent funding.
Powers-that-be have a standard operating procedure for overthrowing an unwanted government: Arm the military to prepare for a coup. Israel and its US ally helped arm and train Fatah to win by force what it lost at the ballot box. The United States also encouraged Abbas to amass power in his own hands, appropriate behaviour in the eyes of Bush administration advocates of presidential dictatorship.
The strategy backfired. Despite the military aid, Fatah forces in Gaza were defeated last month in a vicious conflict, which many close observers describe as a pre-emptive strike targeting primarily the security forces of the brutal Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Israel and the United States quickly moved to turn the outcome to their benefit. They now have a pretext for tightening the stranglehold on the people of Gaza.
'To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole,' writes international law scholar Richard Falk.
This worst-case scenario may unfold unless Hamas meets the three conditions imposed by the 'international community' - a technical term referring to the US government and whoever goes along with it. For Palestinians to be permitted to peek out of the walls of their Gaza dungeon, Hamas must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements, in particular, the Road Map of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations).
The hypocrisy is stunning. Obviously, the United States and Israel do not recognise Palestine or renounce violence. Nor do they accept past agreements. While Israel formally accepted the Road Map, it attached 14 reservations that eviscerate it. To take just the first, Israel demanded that for the process to commence and continue, the Palestinians must ensure full quiet, education for peace, cessation of incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other organisations, and other conditions; and even if they were to satisfy this virtually impossible demand, the Israeli cabinet proclaimed that 'the Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians.'
Israel's rejection of the Road Map, with US support, is unacceptable to the Western self-image, so it has been suppressed. The facts finally broke into the mainstream with Jimmy Carter's book, 'Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,' which elicited a torrent of abuse and desperate efforts to discredit it.
While now in a position to crush Gaza, Israel can also proceed, with US backing, to implement its plans in the West Bank, expecting to have the tacit cooperation of Fatah leaders who will be rewarded for their capitulation. Among other steps, Israel began to release the funds - estimated at $600 million - that it had illegally frozen in reaction to the January 2006 election.
Ex-prime minister Tony Blair is now to ride to the rescue. To Lebanese political analyst Rami Khouri, 'appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.' Blair is the Quartet's envoy only in name. The Bush administration made it clear at once that he is Washington's envoy, with a very limited mandate. Secretary of State Rice (and President Bush) retain unilateral control over the important issues, while Blair would be permitted to deal only with problems of institution-building.
As for the short-term future, the best case would be a two-state settlement, per the international consensus. That is still by no means impossible. It is supported by virtually the entire world, including the majority of the US population. It has come rather close, once, during the last month of Bill Clinton's presidency - the sole meaningful US departure from extreme rejectionism during the past 30 years. In January 2001, the United States lent its support to the negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that nearly achieved such a settlement before they were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
In their final Press conference, the Taba negotiators expressed hope that if they had been permitted to continue their joint work, a settlement could have been reached. The years since have seen many horrors, but the possibility remains. As for the likeliest scenario, it looks unpleasantly close to the worst case, but human affairs are not predictable: Too much depends on will and choice.
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest for Global Dominance.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Chidren in Gaza
A clip from "Dispatches: The Killing Zone" (Channel 4 UK, 2003, director Rodrigo Vazquez), showing perhaps one of the most tragic of several documented cases of Palestinian civilian casualties of Israel's 'war on terror' - even though this victim, a schoolgirl shot through the head while sitting in class in a UN-run school in Gaza, survives her injuries. When she awakes from coma she and her family find out the brain injury she suffers has made her blind.
The complete documentary can be found on video.google
Monday, February 5, 2007
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