The Middle East’s Only Democracy Inc (via the Guardian): Jerusalem’s secular mayor, Nir Barkat, has pitted himself against the city’s swelling ranks of ultra-orthodox extremists by demanding that local police enable women to reclaim their position in the public domain. Over recent months, women’s faces have disappeared from billboards across the city amid mounting pressure…
Showing all posts in June 2019
How to deal with a Murdoch editor
British MP Tom Watson offers a lesson in media management: Yesterday I wrote a column for the Express and Star. It was picked up by a Times journalist this morning. Here is the text exchange between Ben Webster and me, you may find it of interest and or amusing. Ben Webster: Hi Tom, could you…
Clueless Hollywood romanced by occupation-loving Israel
Are these captains of… the entertainment industry totally clueless, and have no idea that they’re being co-opted into selling the image of “cool Israel”? Haaretz reports: Two delegations from Hollywood are visiting Israel to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one comprised of actors and another mainly featuring directors. Today, both groups will meet with President…
Occupy movement has demands (and rejects disaster capitalists making a buck)
While Arundhati Roy addressed Washington Square Park in New York, held at Judson Memorial Church this week: I like her vision: We want to put a lid on this system that manufactures inequality. We want to put a cap on the unfettered accumulation of wealth and property by individuals as well as corporations. As “cap-ists”…
Norman Finkelstein on American Jews turning away from Israel
Why has the disillusionment emerged (via an interview in New Left Project)?: There is a common misunderstanding here, because everybody just assumes that the one and only factor shaping American Jewish attachment to Israel, and also the inexorable one, is the ‘ethnic’ factor: if you’re Jewish you must be pro-Israel, in fact you must be…
Shun “Buy Israel Week”
The following statement was released by Kairos Palestine this week: Bethlehem, 17.11.2011. Anything but subtle – that sums up the desperate campaign recently launched by an assortment of anti-Palestinian conglomerates.… Buy Israel Week, to be held from November 28 to December 4, is an apparent attempt to hijack Christmas shoppers and divert attention from the…
Private prisons leeches on society
Correction Corporation of America’s Stewart facility in Lumpkin, Georgia is the largest private detention center in the nation. Stewart currently profits close to $50 million a year. As if that weren’t enough, CCA often cuts costs by denying basic services to its inmates and by limiting access to their family members. CCA charges inmates close…
What 9/11 has allowed America to become
Sigh: What happens when a government builds a massive, unaccountable police apparatus to thwart infiltration by a foreign menace, only to see the society it’s supposed to protect take to the streets for entirely different reasons? It looks as though we may be about to find out. The Occupy protests have been mostly peaceful, with…