Israeli soldier shooting cuffed & blindfolded Palestinian
B'Tselem posted a video clip documenting a soldier firing a rubber coated steel bullet, from extremely close range, at a cuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainee. The shooting took place in the presence of a lieutenant colonel, who was holding the Palestinian's arm when the shot was fired.
With this happening day in and day out to Palestinians, it's hard to get one's panties in a bunch over constant pleas for Israel's security. Let's worry about that after the people living under the long-ass military occupation have some of it as well.
Tags: human rights, Israel, occupation, PalestineWhy does Italy so easily trend toward fascism?
Italy Passes Law To Fingerprint All Roma
Via NewsCloud via Indymedia: “In their election campaign earlier this year, Berlusconi and his allies had already made clear their intention of deporting tens of thousands of Roma back to Romania and former Yugoslavia. In mid-June a March decisions by Italy’s highest appeal court was released stating that “it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma” because the court found that “they are thieves”. Following the release of the court rulling, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, announced that a file is to be drawn up containing a DNA data base with digital fingerprints and photos of all Roma irregardless of their citizenship. Unicef has protested that this is discriminatory and a violation of the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of the Child.” — Link
What if a database of an entire people was created by a government in order to aid their forced removal and no one paid any attention?Technorati Tags: human rights, Roma, fascism, Berlusconi
Tags: Berlusconi, fascism, RomaWhat I’ve been thinking, but said much more succinctly
“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people.”
— James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University.
Quoted in this article on mobile phone jamming in the New York Times
TED makes public its archive of smart people
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences held every other year, bring together interesting thinkers to share ideas on the present and future situation of just about everything. TED recently posted all its conference talks online, which has provided lots of diversion for yours truly. This one is from 2006 and one of my favorites.
Tags: education, TEDAmericans still have beer goggles for israel
Many in the U.S. are still in the midst of a punch-drunk love fest with Israel as can be evidenced by the massive New York Parade attended by loads who have not actually been to the Holy Land themselves while Israeli expats themselves found the event grotesque enough to miss.
(Associated Press photo: Marchers in New York’s Salute to Israel Parade)
Here in London, we joined a group of Palestinian activists who headed over to the big zionist love-in at Trafalgar Square where they were quickly cordoned off into a side pen across the street from the nationalist event that looked like something the BNP might put on, but with slightly different iconography and color schemes. Six decades of land confiscation later and no plans to declare borders until it gets some more. So much to celebrate!
The coverage of the anti-occupation demonstration by the Associated Press seems based on the amount of space that London police allowed for protest.
Coming from the U.S., the sugar daddy bankrolling the continuing land grab, it just made me wonder when people are going to sober up and lose the beer goggles they seem to toss on every time they look toward the middle east. What will that “morning after” moment look like, when they wake up next to someone who has more in common with Apartheid-era South Africa than the sexy “democracy” they thought they had hooked up with. When they see that they’ve been supporting something akin to Jim Crow Laws and something that shares more in common with the sort of national spirit that shoved Native Americans to the point of extinction, that they’re hanging out with organizations like CUFI and that have more in common with the fanatics they claim to loathe, maybe they’ll snap out of it.
Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe, is what the Palestinians call this anniversary Israel celebrates. Instead of the continuing fantasy that these celebrations seem to thrive on, I thought I’d thow up some links today of some sources where people can see what’s being wiped out.
- Maps of Palestine before and after the Nakba
- Palestine Land Society
- The Nakba Archive Project
- 50 Years of Dispossession : Essays on the Nakba
- Nakba: A chonology
- Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe (1948): Electronic Intifada
- Al-Nakba Refugees Picture Gallery
Below: Yet another attack on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. This one had the startling difference from all the others in that is was reported by the BBC.
Tags: Israel, Nakba, PalestineBritish documentary about guys who have sex with cars introduces UK to Yelm, WA
So people don’t often believe the stories i tell about Washington state. No, not the birth of 90s alterna music, good coffee and better beer. I’m talking about cults, Sasquatch sightings, people who die while trying to have sex with horses and all the other stuff that makes Twin Peaks look run of the mill. But right now on Channel Five is a documentary called Strangelove, about a Yelm, WA, man’s sex life with his Volkswagen, who admits to cheating on it just the once, with Airwolf. — Link
Tags: bizarreThe Dude’s White Russian Recipe
This NPR post about The Dude (Jeff Doud aka jeff Lebowwski) includes the recipe for his favorite White Russian (or Caucasian if you will) — Link
The Dude’s White Russian Recipe:
1 shot (free pour) Smirnoff Vodka
2 shots (free pour) Kahlua
Top off with half and half
(Out of cream? The Dude uses powdered creamer in a pinch)
Tags: the big lebowskiJasper pics update
Stupid protest idea no. 4,365: the gimmick demonstration
And once again a group launches on an ambitious project that will eventually lead to another round of debate among those on The Left on the topic of “why doesn’t anyone take us seriously?
©2008 Google
Can you copyright search results if the entire content is coming from other websites?
I’d be more willing to stand behind Google’s aggresive appraoch to using content and challenging copyright if Google would remove the idiotic little © from its website.
Tags: copyright, Google18 hour radio broadcast on 60 years of Palestinian dispossession
I love a marathon. On Thursday, May 15, from Midnight until 6pm (EST), the International Middle East Media Center in Bethlehem (Palestine) participated in an historic international radio reflection of the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe. This unprecedented 18-hour collaborative radio broadcast included the participation of CKUT 90.3fm in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), CHRY 105.5fm in Toronto (Ontario, Canada), and KBOO 90.7fm in Portland (Oregon, USA), and contributions from Pacifica Radio and Democracy Now!
Click here for complete schedule. The full archives are now available for download as MP3 files, hour by hour segments:
Hour 1 (midnight to 1 am)
Hour 2 (1 am - 2 am) Hour 3 (2 am - 3 am)
Hour 4 (3 am - 4 am)
Hour 5 (4 am - 5 am)
Hour 6 (5 am - 6 am)
Hour 7 (6 am - 7 am)
Hour 8 (7 am - 8 am)
Hour 9 (8 am - 9 am)
Hour 10 (9 am - 10 am)
Hour 11 (10 am - 11 am)
Hour 12 (11 am - 12 pm)
Hour 13 (12 pm - 1 pm)
Hour 14 (1 pm - 2 pm)
Hour 15 (2 pm - 3 pm)
Hour 16 (3 pm - 4 pm)
Hour 17 (4 pm - 5 pm)
Description of Broadcast: Read more…
Tags: Israel, Nakba, occupation, PalestineWindows servers blow large chunks of vomit
Essentially, buying a Windows server means you’re purchasing hours upon hours on support lines trying to get what should be very small things sorted out because, essentially, the marketing scheme behind Windows products appeals to sellers who focus on providing technical support rather than simple, reliable and user-controlled tools. By maintainting what should be easy maintenance tasks as complicated, multi-step projects, you’ll end up spending more time, more money and more energy dealing with “expert” to handle your “problems.” Current time spent working with UKfast support staff for what should be an almost automatic install of a simple php content management system: 3 days. I think they need a new slogan: “UKfast: Oooh the Irony!”
A freaking brilliant essay on the wingnut right’s attempts to smear anyone who dares criticize Israel
On Thursday, May 8, the Independent published one of the best looks at how the zionistas of the rabid right continue to villify anyone who dares look into the injustices Israel hoists on the Palestinian people. Well worth the read. I dedicate this post to it. I haven’t read much of Johann before, but thanks to the attention he’s received by these people, I’ll be looking for more of his writing in the future. He’s certainly pissing off the right people.
The loathsome smearing of Israel’s critics
Johann Hari
The Independent
Thursday, 8 May 2008
In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.
My own case isn’t especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me “a Jew-lover”, “a Zionist-homo pig” and more.
Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn’t controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes. Read more…
Tags: Israel, Palestine
