Tag Indigenous rights

Entries 12 Total

Whanganui or Wanganui but why not Whanganui/Wanganui

Sep 17, ’09 8:22 PM

I’m in Aotearoa New Zea­l­and for a couple of weeks and driv­ing about provided me with the great priv­ilege of catch­ing up with the sea of enlight­en­ment that is NZ talk­back radio, in this case the lovely Leighton Smith. Flip­ping through the chan­nels I just had to stop and listen to one of Smith’s callers com­plain­ing that if they had wanted to call Wan­ganui “Whan­ganui” all that time ago they would have used a bloody ‘F’. Suf­fice to say Smith didn’t offer up any wis­dom to his schol­arly caller.

I’m nat­ur­ally inclined to side with cor­rect­ing the spelling mis­take but I’m also sym­path­etic to the view that the “Wan­ganui” spelling is indeed an import­ant part of the his­tory and cul­ture of the area, even if ori­gin­ally a res­ult of ignorance.

Which is why I have to agree with Read­ing the Maps on the mat­ter. Use both.

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Tony Blair gets payoff from Zionists

Feb 18, ’09 2:09 PM

War Crim Tony Blair has been awar­ded a prize from Zion­ist organ­isa­tion Dan David Found­a­tion, amount­ing to $1 million.

Pre­sum­ably for his efforts to ensure Israel can con­tinue its eth­nic cleans­ing of Palestinians.

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Arabic press on Israeli elections

Feb 11, ’09 12:05 AM

Arabic press on Israeli elec­tions:

Mazin Hammad in Qatar’s Al-Watan

Regard­less of who will win, the dif­fer­ences between the right, left and centre [of Israel’s polit­ics] are not clear for those who closely watch the elec­tion from out­side. They all pounce on Palestinian blood.

Rashid Hasan in Jordan’s Al-Dustur

The vic­tory of extrem­ists, with [Likud Party leader Ben­jamin] Net­an­yahu in the lead, would mean that the situ­ation — i.e. the set­tle­ment and the so-called peace pro­cess — will return to square one … The Israeli state was built on mas­sacres and gen­o­cides com­mit­ted by Zion­ist gangs … There­fore, it is not strange if extrem­ists win.

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Let Netanyahu Win

Feb 10, ’09 9:28 AM

Gideon Levy, writ­ing for Haaretz:

Net­an­yahu would offer some­thing else. First, he is a faith­ful rep­res­ent­at­ive of an authen­tic “Israeli” view — an almost com­plete dis­trust of Arabs and the chance of reach­ing peace with them, mixed with con­des­cen­sion and dehu­man­iz­a­tion. Second, he will finally arouse the world’s rage towards us, includ­ing that of the new U.S. admin­is­tra­tion. Sadly, this may be the only chance for the kind of dra­matic change that is needed.

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Why the Maori seats matter

Oct 30, ’08 11:31 PM

No Right Turn on why the Maori seats mat­ter. Quite something.

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Israel/Palestine: The future is one nation

Sep 29, ’08 9:33 PM

Out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter of Israel, Ehud Olmert, recently quoted as saying:

(I am say­ing) what no pre­vi­ous Israeli leader has ever said: we should with­draw from almost all of the ter­rit­or­ies, includ­ing in East Jer­u­s­alem and in the Golan Heights.

Palestinian For­eign Min­is­ter Riyad al-Malki, in response:

We wish we had heard this per­sonal opin­ion … (before) he resigned.

No shit. But this all pre-supposes the dead end that is the two-state solu­tion. As Ghada Karmi wrote last week in The Guardian:

A unit­ary state is inev­it­able. Estab­lish­ing an exclus­ive state defined along ethnic-religious lines and exclud­ing its pre­vi­ous inhab­it­ants was unjust and ulti­mately unsus­tain­able. No polit­ical acro­bat­ics will alter this. The sooner the UN, which unwisely cre­ated Israel in the first place, takes charge of the con­sequences, the bet­ter it will be for Palestini­ans, for Israelis and for the region as a whole.

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NZ Government arbitrarily ends Treaty claims

Sep 1, ’08 8:14 AM

No Right Turn on the arbit­rary end of all his­tor­ical Treaty of Wait­angi claims.

How can you put an end to seek­ing redress for breaches of a treaty? It’s an absurd con­tra­dic­tion. Either breaches exist and they need to be invest­ig­ated and redressed or they don’t exist. Arbit­rar­ily end­ing the formal pro­cess for these invest­ig­a­tions to take place is like say­ing we don’t need courts any more to invest­ig­ate crimes. In fact it’s like say­ing you can’t even report crimes any more, let alone have them investigated.

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Free Gaza boats successfully break Israeli blockade

Aug 27, ’08 9:28 PM

Over the week­end a group from the Free Gaza Move­ment, includ­ing my good friend Ken O’Keefe, set out in boats from Cyprus and suc­cess­fully broke Israel’s contempt­ible eco­nomic block­ade of Gaza. Ken emailed through a few pho­tos today, with this message:

Some pic­tures to share of a day that may have largely ignored in the West, but was deeply power­ful and mov­ing to not just the people of Gaza, but to the Arab world and beyond.

And a news report from France 24:

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Peter Beaumont throws his toys

Jul 1, ’08 11:56 AM

Photo of Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor for The ObserverWhat’s Peter Beau­mont up to? First he’s cyn­ic­ally try­ing to sell papers by drum­ming up con­tro­versy where there is none, now he’s threat­en­ing to sue Sur­vival Inter­na­tional for call­ing him out on his bullshit.

Sur­vival Inter­na­tional have pos­ted a silly phone mes­sage from Beau­mont whereby he threatens to sue them for “asso­ci­at­ing” him with the false alleg­a­tions that the uncon­tac­ted tribe pic­tures were a hoax.

Peter, really, pull your head in. If you took a minute to read any of the stuff you’re com­ment­ing on or writ­ing about you wouldn’t be in this silly situ­ation in the first place.

And not pub­lish­ing Survival’s let­ter, that’s childish.

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Story of Cain and Abel still taking place today?

Jun 24, ’08 9:22 PM

Speak­ing of Sur­vival Inter­na­tional, they’ve pos­ted a video on their web­site of gun­men hired by farm­ers to attack a Mak­uxi Indian vil­lage in Brazil, part of a bru­tal attempt at an Indian land grab.

The cor­rel­a­tion between this and Daniel Quinn’s altern­at­ive the­ory of the story of Cain and Abel is quite stark.

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