Last Straw

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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. […]

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

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) […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

If you read The Observer over the week­end you might have had the mis­for­tune to come across this grubby tabloid-like excuse for journ­al­ism by Peter Beau­mont, for­eign affairs editor for The Observer.

Beau­mont — clearly hav­ing a slow news day — focused his atten­tion on the uncon­tac­ted tribe pho­tos I com­men­ted on the other day, crudely attempt­ing to drum up con­tro­versy where there is none.