Tag Repression

Israel’s greatest loss: its moral imagination

Henry Sieg­man, writ­ing for Haaretz:

When I man­aged to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invoc­a­tion of the Hitler era was actu­ally a fright­en­ingly apt and sear­ing ana­logy, although not the one my friend inten­ded. A mil­lion and a half civil­ians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhu­man con­di­tions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestini­ans. Their jail­ers, incred­ibly, are sur­viv­ors of the Holo­caust, or their des­cend­ants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas cham­bers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hope­less existence.

Fully 80% of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion lives on the edge of mal­nu­tri­tion, depend­ing on inter­na­tional char­it­ies for their daily nour­ish­ment. Accord­ing to the UN and World Health author­it­ies, Gaza’s chil­dren suf­fer from dra­mat­ic­ally increased mor­bid­ity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscen­ity is a con­sequence of a delib­er­ate and care­fully cal­cu­lated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by des­troy­ing not only its eco­nomy but its phys­ical and social infra­struc­ture while seal­ing it her­mit­ic­ally from the out­side world.

Par­tic­u­larly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amuse­ment for some Israeli lead­ers, who accord­ing to Israeli press reports have jok­ingly described it as “put­ting Palestini­ans on a diet.” That, too, is remin­is­cent of the Hitler years, when Jew­ish suf­fer­ing amused the Nazis.

Haiti earthquake disaster is man-made

This might sound a strange thing to say but let’s not delude ourselves, the dis­aster in Haiti is largely a man-made one. And it’s down to the usual sus­pects:

Haiti is routinely described as the “poorest coun­try in the west­ern hemi­sphere”. This poverty is the dir­ect leg­acy of per­haps the most bru­tal sys­tem of colo­nial exploit­a­tion in world his­tory, com­poun­ded by dec­ades of sys­tem­atic post­co­lo­nial oppression.

Dec­ades of neo­lib­eral “adjust­ment” and neo-imperial inter­ven­tion have robbed its gov­ern­ment of any sig­ni­fic­ant capa­city to invest in its people or to reg­u­late its economy.

It is this poverty and power­less­ness that account for the full scale of the hor­ror in Port-au-Prince today. Since the late 1970s, relent­less neo­lib­eral assault on Haiti’s agrarian eco­nomy has forced tens of thou­sands of small farm­ers into over­crowded urban slums.

As one com­menter notes:

Now is exactly the time to inject some real­ism into the dis­course. I’ve been reading/listening to reports from the West­ern media, and they are full of revi­sions and dis­tor­tions con­cern­ing our his­tor­ical role there. ‘Haiti is a failed state,’ ‘Aristide ‘fled,’ was ‘forced out by a rebel­lion,’ etc., ignor­ing the delib­er­ate cam­paign of destabil­isa­tion and coup d’etat against the demo­crat­ic­ally elec­ted gov­ern­ment in 2004.

Religion-free ways to donate to the relief effort:

To donate to the relief effort in a religion-free way and help counter the scan­dal­ous myth that only the reli­gious care about their fellow-humans you can donate at SHARE or Non-Believers Giv­ing Aid.

Climate Camp’s open letter to the Met

Open let­ter from the Camp for Cli­mate Action to Ian Thomas, the Chief Super­in­tend­ent of the Met­ro­pol­itan Police Service. Worth read­ing in it’s entirety.

Cheney: an evil person for evil times

The Guard­ian: ‘Mem­oirs to reveal Dick Cheney thought Bush had gone soft on war on ter­ror.’ Who knows what dark place we’d all be in if this man had become U.S. President.

They’ve made us scared to talk’

Fam­ily of Ian Tom­lin­son  —  who died after being hit by police­man at G20 protests — speak out.

Neda’s death used selectively as a propaganda tool

Neda Agha-Soltan is a young women from Iran who was shot dead while protest­ing against repres­sion in Iran. She has a page on Wiki­pe­dia. Pho­tos and video and of her death have been widely broad­cast by the West­ern media, with copi­ous amounts of faux sym­pathy. She deserves our sym­pathy because she appears to be a…

Free Ezra Nawi

Sign and send a mesage: freeezra.org Join Naomi Klein, Neve Gor­don, Noam Chom­sky and thou­sands of oth­ers and tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi, one of Israel’s most cour­ageous human rights act­iv­ists. His crime? He tried to stop a mil­it­ary bull­dozer from des­troy­ing the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region. Nawi, a…

How the image of UK police took a beating

G20 protests: how the image of UK police took a beat­ing: It has been a bad month for the thin blue line … it’s no won­der that senior officers this week­end are call­ing a series of crisis meet­ings. But they may already be too late. Pub­lic opin­ion appears to be turn­ing against Britain’s police. Just…

Videos of UK police running amok

Grow­ing cata­logue of G20 protest videos show­ing the UK police run­ning amok.

Do you feel safe yet?

The new UK reg­u­la­tions that man­date the track­ing of all your tele­phone calls and email. It cer­tainly makes me feel safe to have a party of war crim­in­als and their police force track­ing every citizen’s com­mu­nic­a­tions (includ­ing whistle-blowers and journalists).

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