Showing all posts in June 2019

Gideon Samet, Haaretz, February 1: “They [Hamas] will be forced to behave as will be necessary in order continue to do what brought them to power: seeing to the livelihood of a downtrodden population. Without moderation, in a few months they will have no money from the West and from Israel, without which their main…

The State of the Union speech, delivered by a real President. UPDATE: George W. Bush’s main message: “War will always be with us. I define this country in terms of war. I can do unusual, even illegal things, because we are at war. You cannot criticise me because we are at war. I have no…

– The NSW Supreme Court has heard that the Howard government’s terrorism laws “would close off courts ‘as tight as a drum’ and co-opt judges into a regime of ‘extreme secrecy’.” – While the Howard government tries to entice business to donate even more funds to its coffers – the Liberal Party pamphlet sent to…

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem release the results of a new survey: “Thirty-one percent of the Jewish population of Israel state that they do not know the route of the separation barrier. The figure was obtained in a survey commissioned by B’Tselem. More than one-half of the respondents (53 percent) are aware that part of…

Wikipedia has become an essential source of information for millions of online users. A little too informative for some: “The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web…

Khalid Mish’al is head of the political bureau of Hamas. He writes in yesterday’s Guardian: “Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion…

Richard Drayton, senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University, The Guardian, May 10 2005: “The ”˜good war’ against Hitler has underwritten 60 years of warmaking. It has become an ethical blank cheque for British and US power. We claim the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial on the basis of direct and…

A milestone has been reached: “‘Paradise Now’ has been nominated ”˜best foreign language film’ for the 78th Annual Academy Awards – better known as the Oscars. The film was directed by Palestinian Hany Abu-Assad from a screenplay he cowrote with Bero Beyer, the film’s Dutch producer. ‘Paradise Now’ chronicles the 48 hours before two best…