The UN’s anti-racism conference continues in Geneva but it’s hard to see how this event will achieve anything other than an even greater split between the West and the rest. The Australian media has covered the event in a fairly predictable way (and only the public, through letter writing, has allowed the debate to flourish).…
The farce currently taking place in Geneva, known as Durban II, has already thrown up a veritable collection of freaks, distractions, nutty celebrities (what the hell is Angelina Jolie’s dad, Jon Voight, doing there?) and agendas. What follows is a small selection of the issues raised (and yet more evidence that the Western world, led…
I just heard about this shocking story in South Africa and signed a statement in solidarity: The savage attack on Zainub Dala shows the terror of the freedom to use words, and the desire to obliterate them. On Wednesday March 18 author, Zainub Priya Dala was violently attacked as she left her hotel during the…
Barak Ravid, Haaretz: Every year, in almost every country, government reports detailing statistics and demographics of the country’s citizens are published during the last week of December. The reports detail how many babies were born that year and how many people died. Some of those reports are turned into semi-comic articles on the back page…
Democracy Now!, this week in Durban for the UN climate conference, offers one deluded perspective on solving the world’s problems: On Sunday, Democracy Now! producer Mike Burke attended the corporate-sponsored World Climate Summit here in Durban that advocates a market approach to solving the climate crisis. One of the people who attended was the South…
One (via Politico): U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice briefed a dozen top American Jewish leaders on an “all out,” if likely doomed, American effort to derail the Palestinian bid for a vote on statehood at the United Nations, according to three people at the meeting. Rice met with the leaders at her apartment at the Waldorf…
ABC PM shows how people inside Palestine are trying to make life as normal as possible while under occupation: MARK COLVIN: The Palestinian Soccer Union can’t send a team to South Africa so they’re holding their own World Cup instead. The local under-15s are representing each of the 32 sides in Durban and playing to…
Leading Australian legal academic Ben Saul wrote back in March that Israel should no longer be a protected species in the international arena. He’s back with an equally strong statement. And note the growing number of public figures who no longer accept Zionist exceptionalism: Britain’s expulsion of an Israeli diplomat is a lesson for Australia…
Britain’s Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, currently the man of the hour in the UK, told Haaretz this week about his real views on Israel: “As to the accusations that I am hostile to Israel, my actions prove the opposite. I have always sharply opposed various efforts to impose academic and cultural sanctions on Israel.…
Canadian journalist and author Noami Klein, one of the world’s leading critics of Israel and militarism and a relatively recent supporter of a boycott movement against Israel, tells Alternet why highlighting Israeli “normality” is so essential: Well, it has to do with the fact that the Israeli government openly uses culture as a military tool.…