Creative-i

Acceptable Parameters or the Dialectics of Resistance
Layla Anwar
June 20, 2010 – I’ve just read this piece by Arthur Silber – Memo to the Victims. A powerful essay indeed. He kind of nails it, not fully, but quite, enough to make the reader think…hopefully… I say not fully, because he uses the “class” concept…I say it’s beyond class…It’s all encompassing this divide. Class does not cut it no more. You’ve got to read his essay. He says what I’ve been saying all those years. The “victim” is allowed to protest only within the defined parameters imposed upon it. I use the word IT here with deliberation. Because the victim is ultimately objectified into an IT that needs/must fit some category. Some ordained, classified prerequisite. An acceptable pigeonhole., if you like… Arthur Silber in his essay was referring to the Spill, or taking the Spill as some starting point. Oh that famous spill, and the world stopped. I, on the other hand am referring to invasions, to occupations… He worded it from an American perspective, I word mine from an Iraqi perspective that refuses to speak the language deemed acceptable by the invader…

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Pakistan’s slide into total chaos
Zafar Bangash
June 20, 2010 – For nearly 16 hours a day, power (electricity) is out in Pakistan. For those who can afford them, battery-operated units have been installed to produce enough electricity to light a few bulbs and run cooling fans but not air conditioners. In the scorching summer heat of Pakistan, one can imagine the people’s misery. There are no such problems for the elite — civilian and military — who live in their air-conditioned bubbles with an army of servants ready at their command. But if summer heat were the only challenge facing the people, they would have put up with it…

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Palestinian Women under Occupation
by Stephen Lendman
June 20, 2010 – The Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations is a Beirut, Lebanon-based organization engaged in “strategic and futuristic studies on the Arab and Muslim worlds, (emphasizing) the Palestinian issue. In early 2010, it published the second of its series, “Am I Not a Human,” a report titled, “The Suffering of the Palestinian Woman under the Israeli Occupation, “ discussed below. In spite of their “exceptional suffering,” Palestinian women display remarkable endurance qualities. Living under stress in poverty, their homes destroyed, lands razed or expropriated, children sick, husbands imprisoned, fathers killed, and more, they plant seeds of hope, fulfill their daily social role, and participate in political and every day resistance. Since the 1948 Nakba, they’ve been denied basic human rights, security, free expression and movement, a safe and healthy environment, and education. They became refugees in their own land and abroad, bearing burdens beyond the capacity most women can bear anywhere…

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Erdogan ‘is no Gamal Abdel Nasser’
By Lamis Andoni
June 20, 2010 – …Turkey’s so far successful move to fill the leadership void in the region, does not, however, compensate for the absence of Arab leadership. Erdogan is not the new Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late Egyptian president who commanded an unrivalled influence over the Arab intelligentsia and masses during the late 1950s and 1960s, until his premature death in 1970. Neither he nor his outspoken intellectual foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, are – or yearn to be – the saviours of Arabs and Muslims…

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UN: stop forcing Iraqis home
Phil Sands
June 20, 2010 – The head of the United Nations’ refugee agency has urged the international community to stop forceable returns of Iraqis to Baghdad, warning that the crisis facing Iraq and its people is far from over. In hard-edged remarks made yesterday, Antonio Guterres, the UNHCR’s high commissioner, said conditions in Iraq could not yet sustain a return of refugees. Citing a lack of security, failures to achieve political reconciliation and a shortage of basic services, he said a “lot of work” needed to be done before exiles could be expected to go home…

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Wikileaks Soldier Reveals Orders for “360 Rotational Fire” Against Civilians in Iraq
By Ralph Lopez
June 20, 2010 – Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers seen in the now-famous Wikileaks video in which two American Apache helicopters fire upon a relaxed, unhurried gaggle of men in Baghdad, has stated in an interview with World Socialist Website that he witnessed numerous times the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Iraq after IED attacks…McCord said to reporter Bill Van Auken: “we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].He goes, “If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street.” Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, “Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?” And you couldn’t just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I’ve seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them.” The deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime (Nanking 1937, Hankow 1938, German Invasion of Poland 1939.)…

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Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world
Naomi Klein
June 20, 2010 – Everyone gathered for the town hall meeting had been repeatedly instructed to show civility to the gentlemen from BP and the federal government. These fine folks had made time in their busy schedules to come to a high school gymnasium on a Tuesday night in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, one of many coastal communities where brown poison was slithering through the marshes, part of what has come to be described as the largest environmental disaster in US history…

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A Mother’s Message from Gaza: We Embrace Hope
by Dr Suma Baroud
Juen 20, 2010 – The Israeli siege on Gaza, which was intended to weaken us, in fact made us stronger. It was meant to break our will, it deepened our resolve. It was intended to humiliate us, but made us even prouder. In fact, Israel’s foolishness and sheer arrogance has enlivened our cause in world consciousness as if the Nakba (the Catastrophe of 1947-48) happened just yesterday. Israel’s conceit has blinded its leaders from reading our history and learning its lessons; for if they have, they would’ve discovered the simple truth: 62 years have passed since the Nakba, and yet, every day our determination grows by one day worth of resistance, as well as the solidarity we have garnered around the world. It is a mistake to say that Gaza has been undergoing a siege for nearly four years, for a protracted state of siege has been imposed on Gaza – but on Palestine – for 62 years…

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Netanyahu: Security blockade on Gaza will only get stronger
By Barak Ravid Tags
June 20, 2010 – Senior cabinet ministers on Sunday approved steps toward easing Israel’s land blockade of the Gaza Strip, days after Jerusalem had issued a non-binding declaration supporting such a move. “There will be no civilian closure of Gaza but there will be a security closure,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the meeting. “That security closure will be tightened from now on.”…

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Bay Area picket line stops Israeli ship from unloading
David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
June 20, 2010 – Hundreds of demonstrators, gathering at the Port of Oakland before dawn, prevented the unloading of an Israeli cargo ship. The demonstrators, demanding an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, picketed at Berth 58, where a ship from Israel’s Zim shipping line is scheduled to dock later today. The day shift of longshoremen agreed not to cross the picket line. International pressure to end the Gaza closure has increased since Israeli commandos stormed a flotilla of ships attempting to run the blockade on May 31, killing nine people…

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The ugliest propaganda: injustice happens in country A so it’s not a big deal for people of country B to get killed and tortured
Revolutionary Fesenjan
June 20, 2010 – During the Socialist Conference in Chicago, at the end of one of yesterday’s talks which was unrelated to Iran, I went to the speaker to ask him a question about how his theories would apply to Iran. A lady, American, was listening to my conversation with the speaker. All of a sudden she interrupted us and said in an unfriendly intonation that the Iran civilization has 7000 years of history, teachers and workers are arrested and executed in the rest of the world so what’s the big deal if workers, students, journalists etc. are oppressed in Iran, and she added that the Green Movement is orchestrated by CIA. It was one of the few times that I was encountering face to face the cheap discourse of chap-e-ashghali (garbage fake-leftism).
“…teachers and workers are arrested and executed in the rest of the world so what’s the big deal if workers, students, journalists etc. are oppressed in Iran”: doesn’t it sound like Zionists who say that people are killed in other parts of the world so why everyone focuses on Israel’s killings and invasions?…

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A Widow Mourns, An Army Lies
Kara Newhouse.
Last week Palestine Monitor reported that Israeli police shot and killed Shu’fat resident 39-year-old Ziad Jilani in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Wadi Joz. Now his widow, a U.S. citizen, reflects on her husband’s life and death, and the journey he’s taken her on. Moira Jilani remembers her experience vividly, “I felt happy that day. We were going to go out and celebrate, because the children finished exams the day before,” she tells me from her brother-in-law’s house, where she’s spent her days since Ziad’s death on June 11.

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Afghanistan: 7 killed as pro-government militia members fire on civilians in Badghes
Frontier Post
June 20, 2010 – At least seven persons were killed and about 50 sustained injuries when the pro-government tribal militia opened fire on civilians in Sung Aatish district in Badghes province early Sunday (June 20). A resident of the area, who had brought injured to the hospital, told Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) that clash erupted among the Taliban and militia members in Kulari village in Sung Aatish district last night (June 19) which left a pro-government armed volunteer dead. He said the Taliban retreated after the clash, adding that the pro-government volunteers opened fire on the civilians early next morning (June 20) as revenge…

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Report: Israel revoking Jerusalem residency of hundreds
Ma’an news
June 20, 2010 – Many Palestinians from Jerusalem who choose to study and work abroad are finding out that they have imperiled their right to return to their hometown, an Israeli newspaper reported Saturday. The 1952 Law of Entry into Israel determines that anyone who is not an Israeli citizen or the holder of an immigrant’s permit or immigrant’s certificate does not have the right to live in Israel, and his residency in Israel is conditional on a residency permit that has been granted to him according to this law, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported regarding a Palestinian deportee…

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IRAQ: Journalist who hurled shoes at President Bush says stunt had been carefully planned
Aexandra Sandels
June 20, 2010 – …In an exclusive interview with Babylon & Beyond, Zaidi said the stunt was something he had carefully planned for years. “I had decided on it a while ago,” Zaidi told the blog during a recent interview in Beirut. “This is new information that hasn’t been told before,” he said. “I was just waiting for the right opportunity. I was checking every visit that he [Bush] made so I could bring the Iraqi people’s justice upon him. I left my will at my brother’s house and told him to open it if I die. I recorded a five-minute long tape four years ago in which I say that I will hit George Bush with a shoe as soon as I get the opportunity. I left it with my brother telling him that, ‘If I die, you bring it up and expose it to the world.’”…

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Why Isn’t Anti-Palestianism Condemned as a Hate Crime?
by Ahmed Amr
June 20, 2010 – …Simply put, if international law applied to Palestinians, we would have to restore their rights to live anywhere in their ancestral homeland. But that’s not in the cards — because they’re nothing more than Palestinians and anti-Palestinism is the law of the land. If we were of a mind to accord them their legitimate rights, we would be obliged to issue every Palestinian refugee a visa to return to the Holy Land and we all know where that might lead — a country where immigrant European Jews and their descendents would be ‘deprived’ of an exclusive Jewish state. Heaven forbid we should even attempt to persuade Israeli Jews to grant equal rights to the indigenous population. See, that would be considered anti-Zionism which is now deemed indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. The whole notion that there ever was an indigenous population in the Holy Land is a taboo subject. When it comes to the Palestinians, we cast reason aside and conveniently forget history, demographics and DNA. Who died and gave the Israelis and their dispensationalist Armageddon worshiping allies a license to make the absurd claim that Ethiopian and Moldavian Jews are the original natives of Palestine?…

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Khiaban No. 74: On Moussavi’s Green Charter
by Amir K., via Revolutionary Flowerpot Society
June 20, 2010 – …Of course, for now we’ll overlook the fact that [exactly] at a time when people expected political actions from Moussavi, he is selling a political statement to the people instead of acting politically. Nevertheless, is Moussavi’s platform loyal to the memories and the imagination of the people? Let us take a more careful look at the Green Charter. Although the phrase ‘Green Charter’ is new and it is claimed that it is the essence of this past year’s struggle and also the crystallization of the demands of the society for its future, neither the goal nor the strategy proposed by Moussavi have any connection with people’s memories and imagination. The goal is the old [demand for] implementation of the constitution and nothing less; the same goal that had also been announced by the reformists for many years before the hot summer of 2009…

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Sunday, June 20, 2010 : 58 Iraqis Killed, 98 Wounded
Margaret Griffis
June 20, 2010 – At least 58 Iraqis were killed and 98 more were wounded mostly in Baghdad and Tikrit. Turkish troops also struck in northern Iraq where civilians were among the casualties…In Baghdad, two suicide car bombers struck in Nisour Square, where they killed about 28 people and wounded 57 more in an apparent attack on the Trade Bank of Iraq and Citizenship Directorate. The blasts come a week after an attack on the Central Bank. It was thought last week’s attack might have been to procure funds for more attacks. Security has been tightened around goldsmiths and jewelers as part of the response. Also in Baghdad, eight bodies, belonging to women and children, were discovered recently buried in a suspected brothel’s backyard in Zayouna…

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IRAQ: Forced repatriation puts minorities at risk
IRIN News
June 20, 2010 – Refugee officials and rights groups have urged a number of European countries not to forcibly repatriate Iraqi asylum seekers, particularly members of minority communities, because of prevailing insecurity in the country. These demands were made in response to recent announced repatriation plans by the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway. The UK has already begun deporting some Iraqis, with some 40 asylum-seekers arriving in Baghdad on 17 June – the UK’s third deportation in that week…

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Deadly blasts target Iraq bank
AlJazeera.net
June 20, 2010 – Two car bombs have exploded outside the headquarters of the Trade Bank of Iraq in Baghdad, killing at least 26 people and injuring 53 others, security officials have said. The near-simultaneous blasts occurred shortly after 11am [0830 GMT] on Sunday in the Yarmouk neighbourhood in western Baghdad. There are conflicting reports about whether the bombs were planted in parked cars or driven by suicide bombers. Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi army, said the attack involved two suicide bombers in cars…

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Israel prevents official German delegation from entering Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
June 20, 2010 — Palestinian sources reported that Israeli authorities prevented an official delegation from Germany headed by German minister of development Dirk Niebel along with seven German MPs from entering the Gaza Strip on Sunday. The German government has criticized Israel’s refusal to allow the German minister and his entourage to enter the Gaza Strip. Niebel also criticized its decision in an interview published on Sunday by Leipziger Volkszeitung, describing it as “a big mistake in foreign policy committed by the Israeli government.”..

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