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…
When BDS became the necessary default position for human rights
One day, and soon, this message will move from the alternative world to the mainstream and anybody defending Israeli behaviour will be shunned as extreme and bigoted: Professor Norman Finkelstein stormed UK campuses in the week to November 11, lecturing to packed auditoriums in London, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham on How to solve the…
Hands up who wants to make money from the downtrodden?
How our capitalist system is increasingly ordered (and sold to the highest bidder): Late last month, a national backlash forced Bank of America to abandon its plan to charge customers $5 a month to use their debit cards. But Huffington Post reports that the corporation has quietly been mining other sources of fees, preying on…
