The internet revolution is coming to Cuba.
Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, March 4:
Once upon a time, Israelis and Palestinians looked to the U.S. to intervene at moments of heightened confrontation to mediate between the two sides and contain the damage. The Bush Administration, however, has proved entirely incapable of playing this role, because its own diplomatic efforts are hidebound by the requirements of its own war on Hamas.
Condi Rice is sticking doggedly to that script, even though all the other players are making clear that the game is up. The [1] New York Times tells us, for example, that U.S. officials are worried that efforts to broker a cease-fire to end the carnage in Gaza might undermine Washington’s priority, which is not to restore peace, but to isolate and eliminate Hamas: “Ms. Rice wants to avoid the word ‘cease-fire’ because administration officials believe that a negotiated cease-fire between Israel and Hamas — which the United States and Israel view as a terrorist organization — would legitimize Hamas in the eyes of the Palestinian people,” the Times reports. “The fear, administration officials said, is that a negotiated cease-fire would likely undermine Mr. Abbas and make it look like Hamas is the entity with which Israel and the West should be negotiating, and not Mr. Abbas.”
Ah. Cease-fire talks would “legitimize” Hamas in the eyes of the Palestinian people. Right. That would be the Palestinian people who, in a democratic election voted Hamas candidates into 56% of the seats in the Palestinian legislature. Their legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian people is well-established. (And just look how much talking to the Americans has done for the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas!) A cease-fire would “make it look” like Hamas is the entity with which Israel and the West should be negotiating? What planet are these U.S. officials on? What’s the point of peace talks if they don’t involve the party that, on the Palestinian side, is doing most of the fighting? Mahmoud Abbas commands no forces currently fighting Israel, so, simple logic would dictate that the Palestinian entity with whom a truce will have to be negotiated will have to be Hamas. You know, like, duh!
How to spread “democracy”, Washington Post-style.
The mainstream media, as deep as ever.
Harsh words were exchanged Wednesday as Knesset Member Effie Eitam (National Union-NRP) addressed remarks made by a number of Arab lawmakers during a rally in the northern town of Umm al-Fahm in protest of IDF activity in Gaza.
“The day will come when we will banish you from this house (Knesset) and the national home,” Eitam said during his speech, “no sane democratic nation can ignore such treachery at a time of war. We must expel you and all those who participated in the unruly and treacherous rally against the State of Israel that took place at Umm al-Fahm. “You should be expelled to Gaza, where your people, who are fighting us, dwell; that is where you belong,” the MK said.
Eighty-one percent of Israelis support the Jewish National Fund’s long held policy of selling land only to Jews, according to a poll released Thursday. Only 10% oppose the policy while 9% are undecided or refused to answer.
Mitchell Barak, managing-director of the KEEVOON Research and Strategy company that conducted the survey, said, “This poll shows that when it comes to the actual land of Israel - Israelis are definitely not liberal. It is clear that JNF’s 100-year-old policy of raising money from Diaspora Jewry and selling only to Jews in Israel, is widely supported by all sectors of the Israeli Hebrew-speaking population.”
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s (ACRI) report on civil rights in Israel paints a bleak picture: Increasing racism, restriction of personal freedoms and discrimination even within the Knesset walls – and that’s just scratching the surface.
Published Saturday, the report revealed that Israeli youths are bombarded with stereotypic, racist imagery, and their opinions have developed accordingly: Over two-thirds Israeli teen believe Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and violent. Over a third of Israeli teens fear Arabs all together.
The Chinese blogosphere speaks:
After Steven Spielberg withdrew as artistic director for the Beijing 2008 Olympics, it is not surprising to read angry words towards him in the Chinese press, both on- and off-line. But are there other Chinese who think differently on this issue? Shanghai-based scholar and cultural critic Wang Xiaoyu (王晓渔) published the following blog post. The sarcastic tone is not only Wang’s personal writing style, but is also a common trait in many blog writings in the heavily policed Chinese blogosphere, when the subject is politically charged.
The European Union is moving towards the establishment of a European Global Online Freedom Act:
The proposal is not focussed at any specific country. It calls on the European Commission to deal with censorship in third countries through it´s external trade policy. It is in no way solemnly directed at China.
Suddenly, people are waking up in droves from the dreamland of corporate cool.
Al-Jazeera English on the American plans to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government (based on this stunning Vanity Fair article):
Mike Marqusee, Guardian Comment is Free, March 4:
As long as there has been Zionism, there have been anti-Zionist Jews. Indeed, decades before it even came to the notice of non-Jews, anti-Zionism was a well-established Jewish ideology, and until the second world war commanded wide support in the diaspora. Today, as cracks show in the presumed monolith of Jewish backing for Israel, increasing numbers of Jews are interrogating and rejecting Zionism. Nonetheless, the existence of anti-Zionist Jews strikes many people - Jews and non-Jews - as an anomaly, a perversity, a violation of the first clause in Hillel’s ethical aphorism: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
Zionism is an ideology and a political movement. As such, it is open to rational dispute, and on a variety of grounds. Jews, like others, might well view the Jewish claim to Palestine as irrational, anachronistic, and intrinsically unjust to other inhabitants. They might consider the Jewish state to be discriminatory or racist in theory and in practice or might object, on political, philosophical, or even specifically Jewish grounds, to any state based on the supremacy of a particular religious or ethnic group. As Jews, they might reject the idea that Jewish people constitute a “nation”, or at least a “nation” of the type that can or should become a territorial nation-state. Or they might have concluded on the basis of an examination of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians that the underlying cause of the conflict was the ideology of the Israeli state.
Any or all of the above should be sufficient to explain why some Jews would become anti-Zionists. But that doesn’t stop critics from placing us firmly in the realm of the irredeemably neurotic. In their eyes, we remain walking self-contradictions, a menace to our fellow Jews.
Did Moses use hallucinogenic substances at Mt Sinai when he received the Torah?
Music has been used in American military prisons and on bases to induce sleep deprivation, “prolong capture shock,” disorient detainees during interrogations—and also drown out screams. Based on a leaked interrogation log, news reports, and the accounts of soldiers and detainees, here are some of the songs that guards and interrogators chose.
Israel’s leading human rights organisation reveals the barbarity of the Jewish state:
B’Tselem expresses grave concern at the large number of children and other uninvolved civilians among those killed and wounded in the Gaza Strip in recent days.
According to B’Tselem figures, from 27 February to the afternoon of 3 March, 106 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip. Contrary to the Chief of Staff’s contention that ninety percent were armed, at least fifty-four of the dead (twenty-five of them minors) did not take part in the hostilities. In addition, at least forty-six minors were wounded.
In response to the Defense Minister’s initiative to probe the legality of firing at areas from which rockets were being fired, even if the area is populated, B’Tselem reminds the military that attacks on legitimate military targets are prohibited if they are likely to cause disproportionate harm to civilians, or to breach the duty to take caution not to harm civilians. If the military’s intention is to allow shelling of general areas or whole neighborhoods from which rockets are fired, such an attack would be indiscriminate and a grave breach of the laws of war.
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, February 2:
Even yesterday evening, after the IDF already had killed about 50 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed, and including quite a number of women and children, Jerusalem continued to claim, “At present there will be no major ground operation.” It’s incredible: The IDF penetrates the heart of a crowded refugee camp, kills in a terrifyingly wholesale manner, with horrible bloodshed, and Israel continues to disseminate the lie of restraint. Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians than have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians.
“Liberal Fascism”, a book dressed up as meaty analysis by one of America’s leading neo-conservative commentators, is beautifully debunked by a writer who actually understands what “fascism” and “liberalism” truly mean.
Major internet companies are starting to realise that their collusion with repressive regimes is biting them on the arse:
More Chinese dissidents sue Yahoo!
Of course, China appears to be in the middle of a sexual revolution, so perhaps internet censorship isn’t on the minds of many citizens.
