Pages: << 1 ... 1121 1122 1123 1124 1125 1126 1127 1128 1129 1130 1131 ... 1262 >>
Is it a flogging offence to send friendly greetings to Gaza’s beleaguered PM?
Stuart Littlewood
The great Viva Palestina convoy is on its way. It left London on Sunday, with the media doing their best not to notice despite photo opportunities and a press event laid on in front of the Houses of Parliament.
The hundred or so vehicles, carrying humanitarian aid, are expected to arrive in Gaza on 27 December – the anniversary of the launch of Israel’s murderous blitzkrieg.
I asked the organisers if they provided a Gaza postbag for delivering seasonal greetings from supporters and well-wishers. Nobody trusts ordinary mail that has to pass through Israel. The answer seemed to be ‘no’ so perhaps the idea was too much of a burden on an already complex operation.
You Want to Understand Anti-Semitism? Just Look in the Mirror
by Gilad Atzmon
Benjamin Weinthal, the Jerusalem Post’s correspondent in Berlin wondered earlier this week whether Germany has learned from its Nazi history? The question is in itself very intriguing. Considering its past, one may expect Germany to oppose any form of racist, discriminatory, expansionist and nationalist ideology. Bearing in mind Israelis are considered the ‘Nazis of our time’ by more than just a few commentators, one may expect the Germans to advise the Israelis what not to do. One may also expect Germany to stand by the Palestinians for the Palestinians are, de facto, the last victims of Hitler.
The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
by: Jeff Masters
In 1954, the tobacco industry realized it had a serious problem. Thirteen scientific studies had been published over the preceding five years linking smoking to lung cancer. With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world's five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton, to help out. Hill and Knowlton designed a brilliant Public Relations (PR) campaign to convince the public that smoking is not dangerous. They encouraged the tobacco industry to set up their own research organization, the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), which would produce science favorable to the industry, emphasize doubt in all the science linking smoking to lung cancer, and question all independent research unfavorable to the tobacco industry. The CTR did a masterful job at this for decades, significantly delaying and reducing regulation of tobacco products. George Washington University epidemiologist David Michaels, who is President Obama's nominee to head the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), wrote a meticulously researched 2008 book called, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. In the book, he wrote: "the industry understood that the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad. Create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Throw mud at the anti-smoking research under the assumption that some of it is bound to stick. And buy time, lots of it, in the bargain". The title of Michaels' book comes from a 1969 memo from a tobacco company executive: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy". Hill and Knowlton, on behalf of the tobacco industry, had founded the "Manufactured Doubt" industry.
Our Lie-Based Reality
By: Peter Chamberlin
Our government cannot function without the trust of the people. Without unshakeable faith that the people will allow the government to proceed, the governing coalitions of politicians will not dare to implement their own plans. Fear of popular reprisals (which could diminish their power) restrains even the most devious politicians from acting. Even Hitler himself would not have dared to proceed with his vile plans, if he hadn’t believed that the people would let him get away with it. When government plans are so repulsive that no sane person would support them, then it becomes necessary to construct a false version of reality to spoon-feed the people, in order to gain the requisite trust, and with it, the people’s consent.
This is our current situation in America and throughout the Americanized world.
Dr King Spanks Obama: Part 4
By David Kendall
Some months ago, at the 23rd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Celebration in San Francisco, attendees were asked to answer the question, "What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?" [1] This article series is an effort to provide Dr. King an opportunity to answer that question for himself from the pages of a book he wrote in 1967 entitled: "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?". But more than a mere contrast between two persons, this article series seeks to compare recent American history with contemporary struggles, and to explore visions of a more desirable future. This is the spirit of Dr. King's book title and of Obama's campaign slogan, "Change We Can Believe In". At this point, we've reached chapter 5 of Dr. King's book, which advances the following centerpiece of his philosophy:
CONFRONTING DISPOSSESSION: CREATING FACTS IN THE MIND
by Karen AbuZayd
Karen AbuZayd, Commissioner General United
Nations Relief and Works Agency
Sixty years ago today the United Nations General Assembly voted into existence a temporary body known as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA’s task was to deal with the humanitarian consequences of the dispossession of some three quarters of a million Palestine refugees forced by the 1948 Middle East War to abandon their homes and flee their ancestral lands. Just two decades later, the Six Day War generated another spasm of violence and forced displacement, culminating in the occupation of Palestinian territory. Today, anguished exile remains the lot of Palestinians and Palestine refugees. The occupation of Palestinian land persists, there is no Palestinian State and the human rights and fundamental freedoms to which Palestinians are entitled under international law do not exist.
The occupation, now over forty years old, becomes more entrenched with every infringement of human rights and international law in the occupied Palestinian territory. Political actors hold in their hands the power to redress the travesties Palestinians endure. Yet, the approach has been, at best, to equivocate over the minutiae of the occupation – a checkpoint here, a bag of cement there – or, at worst, to look the other way, to acquiesce in or even support the measures causing Palestinian suffering.
A Christmas Guide to Washington’s new Lebanon policy, Checking that list and checking it twice!
Franklin Lamb, Beirut
"There is no obstacle to cooperation with any official in the new Lebanese unity government with the exception of Hezbollah," Nicole Shampaine, the Director of the US Department of State's Near East Affairs Bureau Office for Egypt and the Levant 12/3/09.
Lebanon’s first Sunday morning in December was cold, cloudy and rainy as this politically exhausted country’s’ new Prime Minister, Saad Eddine Hariri, donned a gray track suit, with matching Nike running shoes and joined hundreds of pro-Hezbollah runners, two dreamy Jordanian princesses and 33,000 others from 73 countries as well as all 18 Lebanese confessions for the annual ‘friendship first, competition second’, 42 km Beirut Marathon. Despite the weather, the atmosphere was warm as Christmas decorations were being hung with care across Lebanon in Christian, Shia, Sunni and Druze neighborhoods. Saad, telling race watchers on the sidewalks, “I know I won’t win but I want to participate anyway. We have to bring Lebanese together, and sport is a very important event that can bring them together actually passed on the 42 km course in favor of the 10 km event—but then, how many politicians anywhere, used to the good life, can even run two km these days.
Jews Against Zionism
by Stephen Lendman
They're numerous, outspoken, and range from secular to orthodox to one group calling itself "True Torah Jews Against Zionism."
They believe that "traditional" Jews don't support Zionism, an ideology they call "contrary to Jewish law and beliefs and the teachings of the Holy Torah." They say Zionism:
-- advocates "a political and military end to the Jewish exile;"
The Vanunu Opera and Christmas 2009
eileen fleming
It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings is a proverb that means do NOT assume the outcome of something-such as a sports game-until it has finished.
The proverb originated from Richard Wagner's opera suite Der Ring des Nibelungen in its last part, Götterdämmerung, when the fat lady/the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, delivers an aria that lasts nearly ten minutes and ends the drama.
The Celebration Went Unnoticed - Big Leftist Win in Uruguay
Michael Collins
Uruguay's left wing political coalition, the Broad Front party (Frente Amplio), retained control of the presidency in the November elections. This wasn't just any election. The winner, flower farmer Jose "Pepe" Mujica, was the victim of imprisonment and torture during Operation Condor in the 1970's as a result of his efforts as a Tupamaro rebel. During that period of military dictatorship, the new president spent fourteen years in prison, including two years confined at the bottom of a well.
Mujica won 48% of the vote in the initial round of elections on October 25. He then pushed his total to 52% for a comfortable victory in the November 29 runoff voting against Conservative candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle who gained 44% of the vote. In the 2004 elections, outgoing President Tabaré Vázquez, also of the Broad Front coalition, won with just over 50% of the vote.
Mujica set an expansive tone in his inaugural speech by stating, “My government will be a government of open doors, and above all a negotiating administration … we will demand commitment, compromise and hard work” MercoPress, Nov. 30. He then announced meetings with President Lula da Silva of Brazil and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
<< 1 ... 1121 1122 1123 1124 1125 1126 1127 1128 1129 1130 1131 ... 1262 >>
