Updates from July, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • InI 10:19 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Football game or tear gas and bullets? Palestinians put racist ad to test 

    23 July, 2009 — Palestine Think Tank

    The Palestinians put the controversial ad to test. A video recently posted on YouTube has tried to reenact the game in reality, and found that the result could not be further removed from the situation on the ground: when the Palestinians kick the ball to the other side of the Wall, what they get in return is a salvo of tear gas grenades and bullets.

    The row over a racist advert of Cellcom – an Israeli mobile phone operator, which shows Israel Occupation Forces soldiers playing football with Palestinians on both sides of the Apartheid Wall, continues.

    In the Cellcom advert, IOF soldiers on patrol along the Wall stop their army jeep when it is hit by a soccer ball from the Palestinian side of the Wall. A game ensues, back and forth with the unseen Palestinians after a soldier dials up “reinforcements,” including two smiling women in uniform, to come and play.

    The advertisement made by McCann Erickson, part of U.S. Interpublic Group, ends with the upbeat voiceover: “After all, what are we all after? Just a little fun.”

    The advert has been extensively criticized for making light of the Palestinian suffering inflicted by the West Bank Apartheid Wall.

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  • InI 10:05 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Would MLK Back Iran's Protesters? By Rostam Pourzal 

    16 July, 2009 — Foreign Policy in Focus

    Combine Iran’s post-election turmoil with the controversy over the nation’s nuclear advances, and few Americans are likely to be unsympathetic toward the opposition movement there. Some bloggers have even suggested that the reformist-led protests are inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Several commentators have referred to the wave of anti-theocracy rallies as Iran’s “civil rights movement, perhaps implying that the social conservatives who rule the country resemble Mississippi fundamentalists.

    Reese Erlich and others have reported that the insurrection now sweeping Iran spans class divisions. Middle East expert Stephen Zunes, in supporting the Iranian opposition, has written that “[h]istorically individuals and groups with experience in effective mass nonviolent mobilization tend to come from the left.”

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  • InI 08:20 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Economic History: can we apply the same market principles of the penny press to online news? – Editors Weblog 

    24 July, 2009 — Editors Weblog

    It is a common refrain in the news industry: readers paid for printed news content, so they should pay for the same thing online. To the overwhelmingly majority publishers, this principle appears fair and logical. Thus, the justifications apparently resolved, business managers are now grappling with the choice of payment structures most appropriate for their products.

    Yet, according to News Futurist’s, Jeff Sonderman, such convictions ignore the fundamentals of newspaper production and distribution, namely: marginal-cost pricing. Subscriptions to online content are entirely unworkable, largely because the concept is antithetical to the way that newspapers have functioned for the past 180 years.

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  • InI 08:01 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Honduras Both Sides Say: No Retreat By Reginald Thompson 

    23 July, 2009 — Council on Hemispheric Affairs

    Events in Honduras on the morning of June 28 divided hemispheric public opinion over the question of what constitutes a coup. For some observers, the military’s removal of President José Manuel Zelaya at the behest of the country’s congress and judiciary was classic in that it marked a return to the instability that plagued Latin American political institutions throughout much of the 20th century, especially during the 1980s. Others hailed the ousting of a president who had exhibited what some would describe as authoritarian tendencies, and defined it as marking Chavismo’s first setback in the Americas. With the end of the Cold War, Central American governments had reason to optimistically believe that threats to their constitutional government largely had been eliminated. Zelaya’s unceremonious displacement from the presidency shattered this notion by raising uncomfortable questions about the vitality of regional governments and the challenge to civilian supremacy, as well as the effects of external influences on Honduran politics.

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  • InI 07:33 on July 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Contradiction on Cuba, Mutual Respect vs. Conditionality By John McAuliff 

    17 July, 2009 — The Havana Note

    hillary-obama.jpg

    ‘Let me be clear: America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country. And we haven’t always done what we should have on that front. Even as we meet here today, America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies. We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not.’ — President Obama in Moscow 7/7/09

    ‘As you know, we are engaged in discussions with the Government of Cuba about matters that we believe are important – migration, for example. But we have made it very clear that we could not do much more in dealing with Cuba unless Cuba changes. The political prisoners need to be released. Free and fair elections need to be held… So we are opening up dialogue with Cuba, but we are very clear that we want to see some fundamental changes within the Cuban regime.’ — Secretary Clinton interview with Globovision 7/7/09

    If the President’s words in Moscow are applied to relations with Cuba, and the US manifests the spirit of ‘mutual respect’ he so eloquently advanced in earlier visits to Turkey and France, the conflict between the US and Cuba is all but over.

    However, as Secretary Clinton’s interview reflects, some officials seem determined to fly the tattered flag of conditionality. They insisted Cuba respond to authorization of family travel disproportionately by freeing political prisoners and moving toward approved forms of democracy before the US took any other positive steps. They opposed Cuba regaining its seat in the OAS without such internal changes. Nor, they insist, will the embargo be lifted until this happens (a sentiment unfortunately found in Obama’s own campaign oriented language).

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  • InI 15:06 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    At the movies, London: THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD 

    THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD (Cert TBC)

    yesmen.jpg

    Plus Satellite Q&A with a Panel Including The Yes Men and Cabaret Voltaire Singer Stephen Mallinder

    Tuesday 11 August, 8.30

    The Ritzy Cinema, Brixton

    Directors: Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno. France/USA 2009. 90 mins.

    Sheffield Doc/Fest, in partnership with Picturehouse DOCS and Dogwoof, invite you to a special screening of THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD, including a live satellite Q&A with The Yes Men themselves.

    A documentary following a couple of gonzo political activists, armed with nothing but charity-store suits, as they infiltrate the world of big business.

    They smuggle out stories that are shocking and hilarious, and pull off outrageous pranks that highlight the ways in which corporate greed is destroying the planet!

    Book online or on 0871 704 2065

     

  • InI 13:43 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Palestinians forced to seek work in Israel By Joseph Krauss 

    19 July, 2009 — AFP

    JERUSALEM — Every day they sneak into Israel by the dozens under the eyes of the soldiers at checkpoints — a stream of Palestinian labourers from the occupied West Bank desperate for work.

    “We are always looking for new methods — if the Israelis crack down on refrigerated lorries we use ambulances, if they start stopping ambulances we use hearses,” says Abu Ali, a smuggler who granted a rare interview to AFP on the condition his real name and the name of his village be kept quiet.

    Sometimes it’s a simple question of timing — Abu Ali claims he once sneaked 97 workers across in the luggage compartment of a bus because it passed through a checkpoint at dusk, when the sun was in the soldiers’ eyes.

    The covert commute testifies to the economic despair in the occupied West Bank and calls into question Israel’s claim that its controversial separation barrier keeps Palestinians from entering clandestinely.

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  • InI 13:18 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Now Legal Immunity for Swine flu Vaccine Makers By F. William Engdahl 

    20 July, 2009 — Global Research

    The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new “Swine Flu” vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 virus—which has yet to be rigorously scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted procedure—a global “pandemic” threat?

    The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies.

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  • InI 11:59 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Viva Palestina Series- Breaking the Siege By Salma Elshakre 

    More reports from the Viva Palestina US Convoy


    We spent the days after the Peace Bridge incident finishing the “required” paper work and negotiating with the Egyptian Ministry of Internal Affairs to reach an agreement on time to be spent in Gaza, what we can take with us, and to let all members of the convoy cross into Gaza.  Mr. George Galloway and Councilman Charles Baron made a great effort to come up with a good pact with the Ministry and tried to get the most out of them.  At the end, we were only allowed 24 hours in Gaza and they promised that all convoy members would enter as well as all the medical aid.  They denied the entry of the 47 trucks that we purchased in Alexandria and they still have them at the port.

    We were waiting on the Ministry’s approval to proceed to Gaza for days; we were ready to leave the minute we get the okay.  Finally on the 15th of July we got the approval at 12:30 am, we tried to begin our journey to Gaza at 3 am.  We got a bus at about 4 am and were waiting on three other buses to come finally at about 8 am, the first bus left with the first group of delegates and they head out to Rafah where they waited for the rest of us to join.

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  • InI 11:44 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    MEDIA LENS ALERT: AFGHANISTAN — “BIG BEASTS” BIG BLOODBATH 

    23 July, 2009 — MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

    Closing The Loop

    The “big beasts” of the pre-digital media age are in big trouble, the Guardian tells us. In the last year, they have faced, not only structural challenges but the worst recession for a generation:

    “As advertising revenues dried up, newspaper, television and radio owners – especially those in local media – faced a stark challenge: adapt or die.

    “The result was tens of thousands of job losses and unprecedented uncertainty over how the media landscape will look in just a few years’ time. How many national newspapers will survive? Can commercial radio avoid complete meltdown? How much are people prepared to pay for content online – if at all?” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/10/overview-mediaguardian-100-2009)

    At the heart of the uncertainty lies the internet and how to make it pay. For 100 years the corporate mass media has flourished thanks to its monopoly of the means of mass communication. Reviewing the history of the British media, James Curran and Jean Seaton write that the industrialisation of the press in the early twentieth century triggered “a progressive transfer of power from the working class to wealthy businessmen, while dependence on advertising encouraged the absorption or elimination of the early radical press and stunted its subsequent development before the First World War.” (Curran and Seaton, Power Without Responsibility – The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, Fourth Edition, 1991, p.47)

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  • InI 11:00 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Nicaragua: An unfinished revolution – 17 July, 2009 – Part 4 

    Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman visits Nicaragua and speaks with former combatants and leaders in the country’s civil conflict and to ordinary citizens about how their lives have been impacted by 30 years of broken promises from across the political spectrum.

    Part One | Part Two | Part Three

     

  • InI 10:59 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Nicaragua: An unfinished revolution – 17 July, 2009 – Part 3 

    Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman visits Nicaragua and speaks with former combatants and leaders in the country’s civil conflict and to ordinary citizens about how their lives have been impacted by 30 years of broken promises from across the political spectrum.

    Part One | Part Two | Part Four

     

  • InI 10:51 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Nicaragua: An unfinished revolution – 17 July, 2009 – Part 2 

    Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman visits Nicaragua and speaks with former combatants and leaders in the country’s civil conflict and to ordinary citizens about how their lives have been impacted by 30 years of broken promises from across the political spectrum.

    Part One | Part Three | Part Four

     

  • InI 10:42 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Nicaragua: An unfinished revolution – 17 July, 2009 – Part 1 

    Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman visits Nicaragua and speaks with former combatants and leaders in the country’s civil conflict and to ordfinary citizens about how their lives have been impacted by 30 years of broken promises from across the political spectrum.



    more about “Al Jazeera English – Programmes – An …“, posted with vodpod

    Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

    On July 19, 1979, massive crowds flooded the square now known as Plaza de la Revolucion in the Nicaraguan capital Managua to celebrate the success of the revolution that overthrew one of the most brutal dictatorships in the region. The Sandinistas, headed by Daniel Ortega, emerged victorious from a bitter conflict that had left tens of thousands of people dead promising social justice and freedom. They launched a revolutionary project unprecedented in Central America, but their socialist policies, close alignment with communist Cuba and suspicions they were assisting Marxist rebels in neighbouring El Salvador concerned the US which had long-influenced government in Nicaragua. Washington responded by funding counter-revolutionaries from the former national guard of the deposed dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle known as Contras. A bitter civil conflict ensued only two years after the revolution which lasted until 1990 when a war-weary public handed the Sandinistas a heavy defeat in elctions.

    Broken promises
    Seventeen years on and Daniel Ortega was once more in power but Nicaragua remains one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. Despite still portraying himself as a revolutionary Ortega himself is now accused of being as conservative in his policies as the governments that succeeded him in the 1990s. Many of the former Sandinista leadership are now critical of the president saying he has abandoned his original aims and compromised the principles of the Sandinista revolution.

     

  • InI 08:02 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Felipe Stuart Cournoyer, "Honduras: The Hour of the Grassroots " 

    22 July, 2009 — MRZine – Monthly Review

    Three weeks after the June 28 military coup that expelled Honduran President Mel Zelaya and claimed to overthrow his government, the country remains shaken by a profound and dynamic popular upsurge demanding Zelaya’s return and the restoration of democracy.

    The collapse on July 18 of the much-touted ‘negotiation dialogue’ between Zelaya’s government delegation and representatives of the military coup was all but inevitable.

    The talks foundered on the one issue that neither side could agree to discuss or give ground on: who is the constitutional president of Honduras?

    Mass resistance and even opinion polls show that a strong majority of Hondurans back Zelaya as their elected president and demand his immediate return. The coup has been denounced by all the relevant international organizations: the ALBA Alliance, the Central American Integration System (SICA), the Rio Group, the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union, and the United Nations.

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  • InI 07:44 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    “My Hell in an Israeli Jail”: Israel Prison Population 90 Percent Black Africans By Voice Online, UK 

    22 July, 2009 — Black Agenda Report

    israel-jail.jpgIt should come as no surprise that a settler state based on the rule of one ethnic group would be steeped in racist public policies. But the sheer scope of Israel’s institutional oppression of Africans shocked human rights activists imprisoned for attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. ‘The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison,’ said a Black British activist. ‘The prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.’

    ‘Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli government.’

    Black British filmmaker Ishmahil Blagrove has launched an outspoken attack against the ‘racist’ Israeli government after being abducted from the high seas and imprisoned for seven days.

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  • InI 06:50 on July 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    22 July, 2009 Video Free Gaza News Hedy Epstein 

    This Free Gaza video is an interview with a great woman, Hedy Epstein, just turned 85. She has dedicated her life to working for peace and human rights. In June she was going to sail to Gaza with the other 21 volunteers on board the Spirit of Humanity. But she was attacked just days before she was to leave for Cyprus. She was walking home, when she was thrown on the ground, cutting both knees and gashing her chin. She talks to us from her home in St. Louis, Missouri. Here is her interview and why she believes she must continue to advocate for justice for Palestine.



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  • InI 18:23 on July 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Obama Lies on Two Continents, is Denounced in New York By Glen Ford 

    22 July, 2009 — Black Agenda Report

    ‘Obama peddled his relabeled imperial snake oil to Blacks on both sides of the Atlantic.’

    obama-africa.jpgBarack Obama may be the most effective propagandist for U.S. imperialism in a very long time. But his narrative to Africans is built on blatant falsehoods, and his spiel to Black America is fundamentally dishonest and evasive. Demonstrators in Manhattan declared: ‘We will no longer tolerate a message from within our community, that the policies of Barack Obama cannot be criticized.’

    President Barack Obama tells essentially the same lies as his predecessors, but does it better. His deceptions are aided enormously by the willed receptivity of the desperately hopeful – and none are more eager to believe than Africans and African Americans. In July, Obama peddled his relabeled imperial snake oil to Blacks on both sides of the Atlantic. At the NAACP’s national convention in Manhattan, and before the Ghanaian parliament in Accra, Obama’s message was the same: There will be no redress of your historical and current grievances. Get over it.

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  • InI 17:50 on July 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Video: Cynthia McKinney on Running the Gaza Blockade, and Black Solidarity With Palestine 

    21 July, 2009 — BlackAgendaReport

    TThe accomplished filmmakers at SleptOn.Com sat down with former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney after her release from an Israeli prison.

     

  • InI 14:39 on July 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Iraq: Release Hassan Ahmad and grant him asylum in the UK 

    INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF IRAQ REFUGEES-IFIR

    Name: Hassan Ahmed, Date of Birth: 17/03/1974
    Home Office Ref: A1060342

    Hassan is an active member of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees. He is currently detained in Doncaster IRC and awaiting deportation also Hassan has been a member of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq since 1993. The Worker Communist Party of Iraq is a banned organisation in Iraq and Kurdistan. Its members both at home and abroad are persecuted by the Kurdish and Iraq security forces. Hassan’s life will be in danger if he is deported back to the Kurdish area of Iraq. Hassan has lived in the UK for nine years during this time he has been an active campaigner for International Federation of Iraqi Refugees and helped many refugees integrate into the UK.

    Before he left Iraq Hassan was a member of a theatre company in Iraq and performed in a number of plays in the town of Halabja and other towns across the Kurdish region. The theatre productions were often controversial and critical of both the Kurdish authorities and Islam which lead to Hassan being detained by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in 1997. Hassan was also threatened by the Islamic Movement in Kurdistan of Iraq-IMIK (because of his theatre work) who shot at him. Hassan became well known as an actor, theatre worker and party member of the WCPI across the Kurdish region.

    Hassan was forced to leave Iraq after trying to help a women friend (Sonia). Sonia’s father tried to give her away to pay off his gambling debts. Hassan interceded and stopped her father from doing this. Sonia’s father subsequently reported Hassan to IMIK who tried to shoot him. Sonia committed suicide

    If Hassan is returned to the Kurdish region of Iraq he will be under threat from both the PUK and Sonia’s family who believe he harmed the honour of their family when he stopped her father giving her away. Hassan has lived in the UK since 2001. He is unable to return to Kurdistan or anywhere else in Iraq for fear of his life and persecution. Please help us stop this deportation.

    Please sign the petition:
    http://www.petitiononline.com/IFIRhass/petition.html
    and please send support letters to:

    Ministers of State for Borders and Immigration
    3rd Floor, Peel Buildings,
    2 Marsham St
    London SW1 4DF
    Fax: 020 8760 3132
    Emails:UKBApublicenquiries@UKBA.gsi.gov.uk
    CITTO@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

    http://www.petitiononline.com/IFIRhass/petition.html

    Dashty Jamal
    International Federation of Iraqi Refugees

     

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