PALESTINA/IZRAEL:
From Balfour to Obama: Colonial Thinking on Palestine
In the hands of colonizers and conquerors, language is always a weapon used against the colonized and the occupied. Within an imperial/colonial mindset, language is more often than not used by those in power to fabricate, confuse, dehumanize and dominate. It is a tool used to justify past crimes and to excuse future ones. With settler colonialism in particular, language is used to denigrate or even erase the history and culture of the indigenous population being usurped. As the Israeli Professor of language and education Nurit Peled-Elhanan recently wrote, “[Israeli] apartheid is not only a bunch of racist laws, it is a state of mind, fashioned by education. Israeli children are educated from a very tender age to see 'Arab' citizens and 'Arabs' in general as a problem that must be solved, eliminated in one way or another…. Israeli education succeeds in building mental walls that are far thicker than the concrete wall that is being constructed to incarcerate the Palestinian nation and hide their existence from our eyes…. [Israelis] don't consider Palestinians as human beings like themselves, but as an inferior species, that deserve much less” (Independent Online/Daily News, How racist laws imprison a nation, November 3, 2011).
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Balfour's Apartheid Legacy
The country called Palestine was “liberated” from Turkish Ottoman rule after the Allied Powers, in correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca in 1915, promised Arab leaders independence in return for their help in defeating Germany's ally. However a Jewish political movement, Zionism, was finding favour among the ruling élite in London, and the British Government was persuaded by the Zionists' chief spokesman, Chaim Weizmann, to surrender Palestine for their new Jewish homeland. Hardly a thought, it seems, was given to the earlier pledge to the Arabs, who had occupied and owned the land for 1,500 years - longer than the ancient Jews ever did. The Zionists, inflated by the notion that an ancient Biblical prophecy gave them the title deeds, planned to push the Arabs out by bringing in millions of Eastern European Jews. They had already set up farm communities and founded a new city, Tel Aviv, but by 1914 Jews numbered only 85,000 to the Arabs' 615,000. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 - actually a letter from the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild - pledged assistance for the Zionist cause ignoring the consequences to the native majority.
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Occupy the Occupiers: A Jewish call to action
The occupation of Palestine and stratification of our own Jewish community are consistent with the grievances of the Occupy Wall Street New York General Assembly's “Declaration of Occupation.” It is time for us to reclaim our own community. It's time to occupy Jewish institutions that actively obstruct human rights for Palestinians, like AIPAC, the Jewish Federations, Birthright, the Jewish National Fund, Hillel, and the foundations of right-wing philanthropists, like the Schusterman Foundation, which impose ideological litmus tests on Jews who want to work in or with the Jewish community. It's time to occupy the offices and stores of the multinational corporations that profit off of human rights abuses in Palestine.
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From Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American Domestic Security
Escorted by Brigadier General Simon Perry, an Israeli police attaché and former Mossad official, the group toured the Israeli separation wall, now a mandatory stop for American cops on junkets to Israel. “American officials learned about the mindset of a suicide bomber and how to spot trouble signs,” according to JINSA. And they were schooled in Israeli killing methods. “Although the police are typically told to aim for the chest when shooting because it is the largest target, the Israelis are teaching [American] officers to aim for a suspect's head so as not to detonate any explosives that might be strapped to his torso,” the New York Times reported. ... Some of the police chiefs who have taken part in JINSA's LEEP program have done so under the auspices of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a private non-governmental group with close ties to the Department of Homeland Security. Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, was so enthusiastic about the program that by 2005 he had begun organizing trips to Israel sponsored by PERF, bringing numerous high-level American police officials to receive instruction from their Israeli counterparts. PERF gained notoriety when Wexler confirmed that his group coordinated police raids in 16 cities across America against “Occupy” protest encampments. As many as 40 cities have sought PERF advice on suppressing the “Occupy” movement and other mass protest activities.
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SAD:
Video of police attack on peaceful protesters at Occupy Berkeley
For 'Occupy Fresno', First Amendment trumped by county ordinance (video)
People Locked in Tiny Cages, Crying in Pain: What I Saw and Heard When the LAPD Threw Me in Jail for Exercising My Right to Protest the Oligarchy
There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD's attack on Occupy LA–not unless you think that people peacefully protesting against the power of the financial oligarchy deserve to be treated the way I saw Russian cops treating the protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg who were demonstrating against the oligarchy under Putin and Yeltsin, before we at The eXiled all got tossed out in 2008. Back then, everyone in the West protested and criticized the way the Russian cops brutally snuffed out dissent, myself included. Now I'm in America, at a demonstration, watching exactly the same brutal crackdown…
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Occupy Iowa Caucus: Anonymous Hacker Group Claims Responsibility For Web Video (VIDEO)
The two-minute YouTube video is narrated by a synthetic-sounding voice leveling a charge that both Democrats and Republicans have "failed us" -- citing ties to megacorporations as a key factor. Taking the argument a step further, the video alleges that both parties are guilty of deliberately driving tens of millions of people into poverty. "Voting for these parties is unethical," the voice says. "They have destroyed the American democracy."
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HRVATSKA:
Otvoreno pismo plenuma Filozofskog fakulteta u Zagrebu povodom predstojećih parlamentarnih izbora, 1.12.2011.
Diskurs „uspješnosti“ i „redovitosti“ predstavlja stare neoliberalne ideološke podvale koje se koriste da bi se opravdalo uništavanje civilizacijskih stečevina utemeljenih na solidarnosti i javnom dobru. Na djelu je isti proces koji uključuje pokušaje izmjene radnog zakonodavstva na štetu radnika ili privatizaciju zdravstva. Taj proces se pokušava opravdati štednjom ali on predstavlja istu onu politiku koja je i dovela do krize te siguran put u još veće siromaštvo i socijalne razlike. Ponovit ćemo još jednom: znanost i obrazovanje moraju djelovati u interesu čitavog društva, a ne privatnog kapitala. Visoko obrazovanje mora biti potpuno javno financirano i svima dostupno.
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SIRIJA:
Activists say 25 killed in Syria, most in battle between army defectors and regime forces
The pre-dawn clashes between regime forces and defectors killed seven soldiers and policemen, as well as five defectors and three civilians, according to a British-based group of Syrian activists called the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Elsewhere, security forces killed one civilian in the southern province of Daraa, six in the central region of Homs and three others in areas near Idlib, the observatory said. The U.N.'s top human rights official said this week that Syria is in a state of civil war and that more than 4,000 people have been killed since March. ... November was the deadliest month of the uprising, with at least 950 people killed in gunbattles, raids and other violence, according to activist groups. In the west of the country, Syrian troops detained at least 27 people in the village of Talkalakh on the border with Lebanon and set fire to the homes of nine activists who were on the run, the observatory said. Talkalakh is within walking distance from Lebanon, and at least two Lebanese civilians were struck by bullets on their side of the border on Friday. Witnesses said that they had heard hours of explosions and heavy machine-gun fire coming from the village. ... The reports of new violence could not be independently confirmed. The regime has sealed the country off from foreign journalists and prevented independent reporting. Syria has refused to accept an Arab League proposal for ending the violence under which a team of Arab monitors would enter the country to ensure the government has halted its crackdown on protesters. Arab League officials at Saturday's meeting in Qatar said Syria has asked for a meeting to discuss the proposed monitoring team with the league's secretary-general, Nabil Elaraby. But no date or venue for those talks was announced.
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JEMEN:
More deaths in Yemen violence
At least two Yemenis were killed in a third day of shelling by government forces of the country's second city of Taiz, as sustained violence threatened to derail a fragile power-transfer deal. State media said a ceasefire was reached in the afternoon after a call by Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, the vice-president, for an end to the fighting that has killed a total of 17 people, and a pullout of troops and casual fighters. ... "A seven-storey building has been set on fire," Abdel-Jabbar Mahmnoud told the Reuters news agency by telephone from the al-Hasab district in Taiz. He said residents had fled shelling by government forces based at a security compound in the city. Tens of thousands earlier defied the shelling to march in the city centre demanding that Saleh be put on trial. Residents said government forces used artillery, tanks and rockets on Saturday in residential areas of Taiz, trapping about 3,000 families in the commercial hub some 200 km south of the capital Sanaa. Opposition fighters responded with medium and light fire, they said. Medics said two people were killed, one of them an activist shot by a sniper during the demonstration. The second was a bakery worker killed in front of his shop. Four people were also wounded, including one woman. Gunmen backing anti-Saleh protesters control the centre of Taiz and most of its streets, while government forces have taken up position on hills within the city and on its outskirts. Witnesses said forces loyal to Saleh pounded most neighbourhoods in Taiz on Saturday, while clashes raged in western parts of the city, including Al-Hasab, Beir Basha, Wadi al-Qadi and Al-Murur. ... Meanwhile, local residents took action to try to stem the flow of military supplies to pro-Saleh troops from regions surrounding Tiez, which lies 270km southwest of Sanaa. In Al-Raheeda, 30km south of Taez, locals, including women and children, staged a sit-in on the main road obstructing a military convoy heading to Taez from the Anad base in Lahij, witnesses said. Fresh protests also broke out in the capital Sanaa for Saleh to be put on trial, despite a Gulf-tailored peace deal which granted him immunity from prosecution.
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