Internet evangelists, from West Africa to Sri Lanka, are finding that their efforts to empower the 80 per cent of the world that still waits for Internet access often bring unexpected results. Rural communities have their own way of participating in the digital age.
One of the founders of al-Qaeda has written a message to Obama Bin Laden from his Egyptian prison cell:
Attacking America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours? That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11.
PressTV on the Moroccan-Algerian border opening for the UK Gaza aid convoy:
Israeli chocolate company Max Brenner is a perfect target for a boycott against companies that support the Jewish state’s occupation of Palestinian land.
From small acorns, bigger campaigns will grow:
Palestinian solidarity activists launched a campaign last week targeting Israeli-owned chocolate franchise Max Brenner as part of a growing international movement to boycott Israeli products.
A handful of protestors took up positions outside the Max Brenner outlet in the Sydney CBD near Wynyard Station on February 12 during peak hour.
The protest group distributed leaflets urging people to boycott Israeli goods, in particular Max Brenner.
“[Max Brenner] is not a chocolatier that deserves our support. Choose an alternative to Max Brenner and apply the pressure on Israeli goods that support war crimes and occupation,” the leaflet said.
The leaflet also criticised a section found on the website of Strauss-Elite -– owners of international Max Brenner stores and one of the largest food corporations in Israel -– for expressing support for Israeli soldiers.
Leading Israeli commentator Bernard Avishai on the dirty little secret of the Jewish state:
That Israel is for Jews, and let’s not be too fine about what Jewish means. That “Jewish and democratic” means doing what we’ve done to privilege “Zionism”–exclude non-Jews from “nationalized” land, empower (or pander to) orthodox rabbis, root identity, even citizenship, in bloodlines, sacrilize Jerusalem–and continue doing so as long as there are more of us than them. That Israel’s fate is to hit regularly at Palestinian insurgents and other enemies–”mow the lawn,” in the words of an Israeli intelligence officer I know–and that so long as we are not at peace, we might as well cultivate national unity by supporting, or just overlooking, West Bank settlements, whose leaders are custodians of classical Zionism’s heroic spirit.
Neocons have long tossed around the “anti-Semite” and “anti-Israel” accusations to stifle debate over American Middle East policy. It doesn’t work any longer.
Think Progress reports on the latest neo-con attempt to defend American violence in Iraq:
AEI’s Fred Kagan, the architect of the Iraq surge, has a history of grossly misreading events on the ground in Iraq. In August 2007, amidst the height of skyrocketing violence in Iraq, Kagan claimed that “sectarian deaths” were “way down.” After Baghdad had been virtually cleansed of Sunnis in March 2008, Kagan decried the “magnificent myth” of ethnic cleansing in Iraq.
At an AEI panel Wednesday, Kagan drastically overplayed Iraqis’ tolerance for “collateral damage” resulting from U.S. military incursions. Comparing Afghanistan and Iraq, Kagan said that a notable difference between the two wars is that Iraqi civilians “were not bitching” when civilians were killed:
KAGAN: The interesting thing is that when we were fighting those battles and doing that damage, on the whole the Iraqis were not bitching about collateral damage.
Being in Indonesia it’s been interesting to read the Jakarta Post every day. This week’s visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has resulted in column after column about her trip and its meaning (example one.)
Like so many nations around the world, the Indonesian political and media elite crave Washington’s embrace and acceptance (many reader comments back this up.)
An alternative reading of the acclaimed Israeli film, Waltz with Bashir:
To say that Palestinians are absent in Waltz with Bashir, to say that it is a film that deals not with Palestinians but with Israelis who served in Lebanon, only barely begins to describe the violence that this film commits against Palestinians. There is nothing interesting or new in the depiction of Palestinians — they have no names, they don’t speak, they are anonymous. But they are not simply faceless victims. Instead, the victims in the story that Waltz with Bashir tells are Israeli soldiers. Their anguish, their questioning, their confusion, their pain — it is this that is intended to pull us. The rotoscope animation is beautifully done, the facial expressions so engaging, subtle and torn, we find ourselves grimacing and gasping at the trials and tribulations of the young Israeli soldiers and their older agonizing selves. We don’t see Palestinian facial expressions; only a lingering on dead, anonymous faces. So while Palestinians are never fully human, Israelis are, and indeed are humanized through the course of the film.
The story of a Gazan martyr.
Will the US soon embrace “terrorists”? Looks like it (as without engaging Hamas, peace in the Middle East is literally impossible, something that pleases the Zionist lobby no end):
US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell expressed support for Egyptian efforts to forge a Palestinian national unity government, indicating that America could take a new tack on Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, during a conference call Thursday with Jewish leaders.
