De Westerse Terreur 75

Paul heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "The Empire 553" achtergelaten: Maar als Jan Soldaat op hetzelfde gebied iets doet volgt opeens vervolging en is men opeens principieel An Alaska-based soldier is under investigation for a video on his Facebook page that taunts smiling Iraqi children by asking if they're gay, if they engage in certain sex acts and if they would grow up to be terrorists. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25532.htm Children Taunted In Iraq: U.S. Soldier Under Investigation Video May 25, 2010 "Huffington Post" - -ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An Alaska-based soldier is under investigation for a video on his Facebook page that taunts smiling Iraqi children by asking if they're gay, if they engage in certain sex acts and if they would grow up to be terrorists. The two young boys did not appear to understand the questions, which were in English, but smiled at the camera and at times flashed the "thumbs up" gestures during the 30-second clip. Spc. Robert A. Rodriguez, who is based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, was ordered to remove the video from his site, Army spokesman Maj. Bill Coppernoll said Monday. "The incident is currently under investigation, and the Army will take appropriate action based on the findings of the investigation," he said. It wasn't immediately clear if Rodriguez shot the video or just posted it, and discovering that will be part of the Army's investigation, Coppernoll said. The video is "disgraceful and clearly inconsistent" with standards expected of every soldier, he said. WATCH: Raleigh, N.C., television station WRAL first reported the video after another soldier stationed at Fort Wainwright shared it with friends in North Carolina, who took their concerns to the station. WRAL aired part of the video and quoted from Rodriquez's Facebook page before the site was made private. Above the Facebook video posting, which was titled, "future gay terrorist!," is written, "i got bored in iraq ... so I kept myself entertained!" The boys are shown on a dirt road, facing a camera. A voice is heard asking the boys, "Are you going to grow up to be a terrorist?" When the boys show two thumbs up, the voice on the video says, "Yeah. All right. Cool. Yeah, terrorist." There was no phone listing for Rodriguez in the Fairbanks area. Coppernoll said he did not know the soldier's hometown, but the video of the Facebook page shown on WRAL indicated Rodriguez listed Miami. "For anybody to be so cruel and disrespectful to children of any country but especially a country that we are occupying is really disgraceful and repugnant," said Tim Stallard, a spokesman for Alaskans Together for Equality. The anti-gay bias is disturbing, also, he said. "It's ugly, as well, and it's sorry to see anybody expressing such unfortunate and strong bias against gay people," he said.

Oil 67

Paul heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "Oil 66" achtergelaten:

http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/5397/Milieu/article/detail/1109592/2010/05/25/BP-trekt-zich-niks-aan-van-verbod-en-sproeit-gewoon-door-met-kankerverwekkend-gif.dhtml

Afgelopen week gaf de Amerikaanse milieubeschermingsdienst EPA olieconcern BP een ultimatum om te stoppen met het besproeien van de olievlek in de Golf van Mexico met het uiterst giftige en kankerverwekkende Corexit. Dat ultimatum is zondagavond afgelopen, maar BP trekt zich daar niks van aan en sproeit gewoon door. Jean-Michel Cousteau waarschuwt ondertussen dat de ramp zwaar onderschat wordt en dat de gevolgen merkbaar zullen zijn tot in Europa en zelfs tot aan de noordpool. Hij heeft het over een catastrofe die niet alleen de natuur "tientallen jaren" zal teisteren, maar die ook tienduizenden jobs gaat kosten.

BP trekt zich niks aan van verbod en sproeit gewoon door met kankerverwekkend gif

Jean-Michel Cousteau waarschuwt: "Dit is ongekende catastrofe met immense impact"

Afgelopen week gaf de Amerikaanse milieubeschermingsdienst EPA olieconcern BP een ultimatum om te stoppen met het besproeien van de olievlek in de Golf van Mexico met het uiterst giftige en kankerverwekkende Corexit. Dat ultimatum is zondagavond afgelopen, maar BP trekt zich daar niks van aan en sproeit gewoon door. Jean-Michel Cousteau waarschuwt ondertussen dat de ramp zwaar onderschat wordt en dat de gevolgen merkbaar zullen zijn tot in Europa en zelfs tot aan de noordpool. Hij heeft het over een catastrofe die niet alleen de natuur "tientallen jaren" zal teisteren, maar die ook tienduizenden jobs gaat kosten.

Volgens BP zijn er geen alternatieven voor Corexit, en het vecht de door Obama-administratie opgelegde verbod aan met een 12-pagina's tellend juridisch document. De firma heeft commerciële banden met Nalco, de makers van Corexit. Het verdiende al meer dan 40 miljoen aan het gebruiken van het verdunningsmiddel bij het bestrijden van de olieramp in de Golf.

Corexit is in veel landen verboden, wegens aangetoond dat het kankerverwekkend, mutagenetisch (het verandert de genen van een organisme, of, om het simpel te stellen leidt tot mutaties bij vissen en zeedieren inclusief koralen) en het is bijzonder toxisch. Er zijn op z'n minst 12 andere middelen die veel effectiever en veiliger zijn.

Beurswaarde -25 procent
BP, dat ondertussen al 25 procent van z'n beurswaarde zag verdwijnen sinds de ramp, heeft er alle belang bij dat naar de buitenwereld toe zo weinig mogelijk te zien valt over de ware schade die de ramp aanricht. Corexit is op dat gebied handig. Het lost de olie niet op, maar "breekt" die. Lees: het vermindert de kans van storende plaatjes van een dikke oliepasta die de kusten en de daar levende dieren versmacht. Het maakt de olie geenszins minder vervuilend, het ziet er alleen beter uit.

Catastrofe
De gevolgen van de olieramp in de Golf van Mexico zullen tientallen jaren aanslepen en gaan gevoeld worden tot in Europa en zelfs aan de noordpool. Marine-bioloog Jean-Michel Cousteau spreekt van de grootste milieuramp ooit, en waarschuwt dat er tienduizenden jobs zullen verloren gaan door de gevolgen van de olievlek.

"BP, de overheid en veel media liegen tegen het publiek over de ernst van de situatie", aldus Cousteau. "De gevolgen zijn catastrofisch. De hele onderwater-voedselketen, niet alleen in de Golf van Mexico, maar ook in de Caraïben en tot in Europa, zal jarenlang de gevolgen dragen."

Alaska
Cousteau merkt op dat er elke vier à vijf dagen, nu al een maand lang, een hoeveelheid olie lekt die equivalent is met wat de Exxon Valdez in Alaska verloor. "Zelfs nu, 21 jaar later, zijn de gevolgen daar nog hallucinant", aldus Cousteau. "Aan de oppervlakte lijkt alles in orde, maar als je er een spade in de grond steekt, stoot je meteen op een laag olie en op de stranden van Prince William Sound spoelt nog regelmatig olie aan."

25 miljoen trekvogels
Bij de ramp met de Exxon Valdez stierven 600.000 vogels, een ontelbaar aantal vissen en duizenden zee-otters en andere zeezoogdieren. Volgens natuurbeschermers zal de tol nog veel hoger komen te liggen in de Golf van Mexico. Eén van de problemen daarbij is dat we nooit echt gaan weten hoe hoog. Want doordat het lek op 70 kilometer van de kust ligt, zinken de meeste getroffen dieren gewoon naar de bodem.

In de getroffen regio passeren tijdens het migratieseizoen dagelijks tot 25 miljoen trekvogels, waaronder 110 soorten neo-tropische zangvogels, bijvoorbeeld. Ook voor de meeste ganzen en eenden op het Noord-Amerikaanse continent is de streek van levensbelang.

110 km kustlijn om zeep
De jongste dagen is de olie ook beginnen aanspoelen. Ondertussen is volgens Bobby Jindal, de gouverneur van Louisiana, al 110 kilometer kustlijn bedoezeld met olie. BP is een charmeoffensief gestart. "Ik kan u verzekeren dat wij hier voor lange tijd zijn. Wij gaan elke druppel olie aan de kust opruimen," zei algemeen directeur Tony Hayward op een persconferentie in Port Fourchon in Louisiana.

De stranden van Port Fourchon zijn al flink vervuild door de olie die vrijkomt uit het gezonken boorplatform Deepwater Horizon. Hayward zei "diep geschokt" te zijn, en erkent dat de milieuramp de reputatie van zijn bedrijf ernstig aantast. "Het is duidelijk dat BP geconfronteerd wordt met een serieus imagoprobleem". Het bedrijf wordt ervan beschuldigd de waarheid te verdraaien over de liters olie die elke dag in zee stromen.

Topkill
BP herhaalde dat het onderzoekt om het olielek te dichten met cement. De operatie zou morgen van start kunnen gaan, een dag later dan eerst aangekondigd. Hayward schat de kans op succes op 60% à 70%.

Maar ondanks de "goede bedoelingen" van BP, komen er elke dag berichten binnen die de vragen doen rijzen over de echte intenties van het bedrijf. Eerst was er chantage van vissers die wilden helpen bij de opkuis - ze moesten een papier tekenen dat ze nooit schadeclaims tegen BP omtrent de ramp zouden indienen. Nu blijkt dat het laboratorium waar alle samples die plaatselijke mandatarissen van de milieudiensten van de overheid nemen om aan te tonen hoe verontreinigd het water is, worden uitgevoerd door een bedrijf dat als grootste klant, u raadt het, BP heeft.

Draaideur
Het is maar één voorbeeld van wat de "draaideur" tussen de Amerikaanse overheid en de petroleumindustrie wordt genoemd. Sylvia Baca, deputy assistant secretary van de Minerals Management Service, het overheidsbureau dat offshore drilling reglementeert en toekijkt op de naleving van die reglementen, en nu dus ook BP op de vingers moet kijken bij de ramp in de Golf, blijkt daarvoor acht jaar voor BP te hebben gewerkt.

Alleen BP mag dieren redden
Nog zo'n mooie: dierenorganisaties en vrijwilligers die willen helpen om door de olie getroffen beestjes te helpen, hebben van de overheid te horen gekregen dat ze dat niet mogen. Want, zegt de overheid, BP moet dat betalen, maar dat impliceert wel dat BP zelf mag kiezen welk "bedrijf" het daar voor inzet.

Hier zitten twee zaken achter. Eén: de schadevergoeding die BP te wachten staat, wordt voor een groot deel berekend op hoeveel dieren zijn gestorven. Het bedrijf heeft er dus alle belang bij dat zaakje in de hand te houden. Twee: de Oil Pollution Act van 1990. Die stelde na de Exxon Valdez-ramp dat de vervuiler verantwoordelijk is voor het opkuisen.

Informatie, BP-style
Alle informatie die vanuit officiële kanalen bekend gemaakt wordt over de ramp, gaat overigens via het Joint Information Center (JFI), een zogezegd door de overheid opgericht initiatief. Van daaruit komen bijvoorbeeld alle officiële persberichten van de ramp. De locatie van dat centrum is in Robert, Louisiana, in een conference center dat eigendom blijkt van BP. 10 van de 65 mensen die werken in het JFI staan ook op de payroll van BP.

Hulp voor vissers
De Amerikaanse regering heeft voor de visserij de staten Alabama, Louisiana en Mississippi tot rampgebied verklaard. Die maatregel maakt het mogelijk federale hulp te bieden aan de vissers en andere partijen die afhankelijk zijn van de visserij. (mvl)

Goldman Sachs 8

http://maxkeiser.com/2010/05/25/kr45-keiser-report-goldman-sachs-undeclared-enemy-of-the-state/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Maxkeisercom+%28maxkeiser.com%29

Goldman Sachs, Undeclared Enemy of the State

May 25th, 2010 by stacyherbert

Stacy Summary: We look at the scandals of naked short selling, supplementary liquidity providers and the conspiracy of banks. And we also mention the financial terrorist playing cards. In the second half of the show, Max interviews Jim Rickards about naked short selling and overwhelming the specialist system, Wall Street banks undermining Greece and Goldman Sachs as an undeclared national enemy. (**UPDATE** – Below is a jibber jabber thread for the latest market carnage).

The Empire 566

Dumbing Down Teachers: Attacking Colleges of Education in the Name of Reform

Tuesday 25 May 2010

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

As the Obama administration's educational reform movement increasingly adopts the interests and values of a "free-market" culture, many students graduate public schooling and higher education with an impoverished political imagination, unable to recognize injustice and unfairness. They often find themselves invested in a notion of unattached individualism that severs them from any sense of moral and social responsibility to others or to a larger notion of the common good. At the same time, those students who jeopardize the achievement of the quantifiable measures and instrumental values now used to define school success are often subjected to harsh disciplinary procedures, pushed out of schools, subjected to medical interventions or, even worse, pushed into the criminal justice system.[1] Most of these students are poor whites and minorities of color and, increasingly, students with special needs.

To be sure, the empirical emphasis of conservative school policy has been in place for decades. In keeping with this trend, the Obama administration's educational policy under the leadership of Arne Duncan lacks a democratic vision and sense of moral direction. Consequently, it reproduces rather than diminishes many of these problems. In addition, these policies bear the trace of the ideological remnants of a second Gilded Age that repudiated civic education and schooling as a public good. Rather than arguing for educational reforms and a value shift away from the ethically deadening demands of an egocentric, consumerist society that can only respond to the lure of goods, profits and "rational investments," Obama and Duncan are pushing the same pernicious set of values that redefine citizens as stockholders, customers and clients. Similarly, they have pushed for modes of teaching and learning that promote a formative culture that in effect produces and legitimates a culture of illiteracy and moral indifference that too closely correlates with what journalist Matt Taibbi rightly calls a "world of greed without limits."[2] Instead of promoting or extending "education's democratizing influence on the nation"[3] as part of one needed response to the corruption that led to the global recession, Duncan has fervently placed American society under the sway of an educational reform movement that is at odds with a vision of schooling dedicated to the cultivation of an informed, critical citizenry capable of actively participating and governing in a democratic society. In fact, Duncan's understanding of school reform is contrary to forms of knowledge and pedagogy that enable rather than subvert the potential of a socially just and sustainable society.

Almost all of Duncan's polices are indebted to the codes of a market-driven business culture, legitimated through discourses of measurement, efficiency and utility. This is a discourse that values hedge fund managers over teachers, privatization over the public good, management over leadership and training over education. Duncan's fervent support of neoliberal values are well-known and are evident in his support for high-stakes testing, charter schools, school-business alliances, merit pay, linking teacher pay to higher test scores, offering students monetary rewards for higher grades, CEO-type management, abolishing tenure, defining the purpose of schooling as largely job training, the weakening of teacher unions and blaming teachers exclusively for the failure of public schooling.[4] His support of the firing of the entire faculty of a Central Falls High School in Rhode Island is indicative of his disdain for public school teachers and teacher unions. Although teachers and administrators have to accept responsibility for the academic performance of their students, there are often many other factors that have to be taken into consideration such as a parent's involvement, the socio-economic status of the students, the existence of support services for students and the challenges that emerge when students do not speak English as a first language. Many of the Central Falls students did not speak English well, came from families that were poor, worked after school and had few support services and specialists at their disposal.[5] Obama and Duncan ignored all of these factors because they have little sense of the larger socio-economic forces that bear down on schools, putting many students at a decided disadvantage when compared to their well-resourced, middle-class counterparts.

Duncan has expanded the reach of his educational reform policies and is now attempting to rewrite curricular mandates. Emphasizing the practical and experiential, he seeks to gut the critical nature of theory, pedagogy and knowledge taught in colleges of education. This is an important issue to more than just teachers who are denied a voice in curricular development; it also affects whole generations of youth. Such a bold initiative reveals in very clear terms the political project that drives his reforms and what he fears about both public schooling and the teachers who labor in classrooms every day.

Within the last year, Duncan has delivered a number of speeches in which he has both attacked colleges of education and called for alternative routes to teacher certification.[6] According to Duncan, the great sin these colleges have committed in the past few decades is that they have focused too much on theory and not enough on clinical practice; and by theory he means critical pedagogy, or those theories that enable prospective teachers to situate school knowledges, practices and modes of governance within wider critical, historical, social, cultural, economic and political contexts. Duncan wants such colleges to focus on practical methods in order to prepare teachers for an outcome-based education system, which is code for pedagogical methods that are as anti-intellectual as they are politically conservative. This is a pedagogy useful for creating armies of number crunches, reduced to supervising the administration of standardized tests, but not much more. Reducing pedagogy to the teaching of methods and data-driven performance indicators that allegedly measures scholastic ability and improve student achievement is nothing short of scandalous. Rather than provide the best means for confronting "difficult truths about the inequality of America's political economy," such a pedagogy produces the swindle of "blaming inequalities on individuals and groups with low test scores."[7] This is a pedagogy that sabotages any attempt at self-reflection and quality education, all the while providing an excuse for producing moral comas and a flight from responsibility.

By espousing empirically based standards as a fix for educational problems, advocates of these measures do more than oversimplify complex issues, they also remove the classroom from larger social, political and economic forces and offer up anti-intellectual and ethically debased technical and punitive solutions to school and classroom problems. In addition, Duncan's insistence on banishing theory from teacher education programs in favor of promoting narrowly defined skills and practices foreshadows the preparation of teachers as a subaltern class who believe that the purpose of education is only to train students to compete successfully in a global economy. This model of teaching being celebrated here is one in which teachers are constructed as clerks and technicians who have no need for a public vision in which to imagine the democratic role and social responsibility that schools, teachers or pedagogy might assume for the world and future they offer to young people. Drew Gilpin Faust, the current president of Harvard University, is right in insisting, "But even as we as a nation have embraced education as critical to economic growth and opportunity, we should remember that [public schools], colleges and universities are about a great deal more than measurable utility. Unlike perhaps any other institutions in the world, they embrace the long view and nurture the kind of critical perspectives that look far beyond the present."[8]

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/dumbing-down-teachers-attacking-colleges-education-name-reform59820

Palestina 34

_
The PA's disingenuous boycott campaign

By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 25 May 2010
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11286.shtml

In recent weeks, the US- and Israeli-backed Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) has made a show of calling on Palestinians to boycott goods manufactured in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Despite the rhetoric of defiance and resistance, and exaggerated screams of anguish from Israeli settler groups, the PA effort actually appears designed to co-opt, undermine and abort the much broader Palestinian civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), and to reassure Israel of the continued docility and collaboration of its puppet regime in Ramallah.

As part of his daily routine of publicity stunts, unelected Ramallah-based "Prime Minister" Salam Fayyad has been seen tossing bundles of settler-produced goods onto bonfires. As for PA "President" Mahmoud Abbas, he recently signed the "Karama" (dignity) Pledge -- promising not to allow settlement goods into his house and encouraging others to do the same. PA volunteers have been going door-to-door in the occupied West Bank to distribute lists of settler-made consumer goods that should be avoided.

So far, all well and good. Palestinians and those in solidarity with them should absolutely boycott Israeli products. Since 2005, hundreds of Palestinian organizations endorsed an appeal which "call[s] upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era" ("Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)," 9 July 2005).

The BDS movement has seen activists all over the world calling -- with increasing success -- on companies to cease doing business in Israel, to stop selling Israeli products, for international performers not to perform in Israel, for academics to refuse cooperation with Israeli institutions and for cultural institutions to boycott Israeli government-sponsored events aimed at prettifying Israel's apartheid practices.

Recently, dozens of Palestinian youth organizations, independent as well as aligned with virtually every political faction, inside and outside historic Palestine, issued a joint call under the title "Palestinian youth united against normalization with Israel." The youth "declare our rejection of normalization with Israel on all levels" -- economic, political, cultural and institutional -- and their adherence to the principles of the Palestinian independent Boycott National Committee which steers the BDS movement ("Palestinian youth united against normalization with Israel," 28 April 2010).

BDS represents the broad consensus of Palestinian society, but the PA settlement boycott campaign actually violates and calls on people to defy the BDS call. During a photo opportunity where he affixed a sticker to the door of his house attesting that it was free of settlement goods, Abbas emphasized, "We are not boycotting Israel, because we have agreements and imports from it."

Similarly the official PA website for the ironically-named "Karama Pledge" states: "Regarding trade with Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Economy confirms continuing its cooperation as it was agreed at the [1994] Paris summit" (http://karama.ps).

All of this is no doubt under the rubric of the PA's famous "adherence to signed agreements" dictated by the Quartet (the US, EU, Russia and the UN). But the PA website even acknowledges that Israel itself does not abide by agreements and that "Israel forbids any of our products from reaching its markets. In addition, Israel places many obstacles that face Palestinian products waiting to be exported to foreign countries ... Israel is even denying Palestinian rights which were agreed in the Paris agreement."

The PA's insistence on abiding by agreements Israel constantly violates is further evidence -- if it were needed -- of the PA's terminal subservience. Given this reality, the main purpose of its campaign is actually to undermine both the methods and goals of the growing grassroots BDS movement and to preach to Palestinians that they must and should do business with Israel and allow Israeli goods in their markets and cooperate and normalize with Israel unconditionally.

The 2005 Palestinian BDS call states that "nonviolent punitive measures should be maintained" until Israel meets all its obligations to Palestinian rights and international law, specifically: ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab land and dismantling the apartheid wall; recognizing the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. The PA campaign, by contrast, makes no mention of these goals whatsoever, focusing narrowly on settlements -- but even this is an empty commitment.

As part of the PA's hasbara campaign, Abbas issued a decree threatening large fines and terms of imprisonment up to six years for those who deal in or import settlement goods into the West Bank. Notably this decree does not impose any penalties on Palestinian businessmen who sell goods and provide services to the settlers. In recent years credible allegations have repeatedly surfaced that a number of senior PA and Fatah officials, including most notoriously former PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, and their family members have grown rich from selling cement to Israel for construction of settlements and the apartheid wall (or acting as brokers to import cement from Egypt on behalf of Israeli companies). Despite repeated promises that the PA attorney-general would investigate and prosecute such violations nothing has ever happened. Unsurprisingly, Abbas and Fayyad -- despite their new found anti-settlement zeal -- still seem uninterested in investigating PA complicity.

While undermining BDS is probably the main aim of the bogus PA campaign it is likely not the only one. The Abbas/Fayyad regime lacks any legal, political or democratic legitimacy. It invested all its efforts into the endless and pointless US-sponsored "peace process" that has made Palestinians worse off by every possible measure. In recent years, independent grassroots campaigns have taken off, including BDS and the popular nonviolent struggles against the West Bank wall and settlements. But just as Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization was surprised and alarmed by the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987 and moved quickly to try to control and co-opt it, the PA leadership is attempting to do exactly the same now. The PA is not just attempting undermine the independent BDS and grassroots campaigns, but to co-opt them precisely because of their growing power, popularity and legitimacy as liberation strategies, in the hope that some of that legitimacy
will rub off on the Ramallah regime.

The Electronic Intifada previously reported on the PA's middle-of-the-night arrest of Mousa Abu Maria, co-coordinator of the grassroots Palestine Solidarity Project in the occupied West Bank village of Beit Ommar.

Abu Maria, as reported in The Economist, sees the PA's sudden interest in popular nonviolent resistance as "a veiled bid by Mr. Fayyad to gain control of an independent grassroots movement and to turn the drive for a Palestinian state into a cause without rebels" ("Can Palestinians peacefully build a state?," 20 May 2010). More generally, US-trained PA paramilitaries continue their harsh crackdown on any sort of independent activism and organizing in the occupied West Bank.

Consider too the irony that the PA has launched its campaign against the settlements at precisely the moment it is engaged in US-brokered "proximity talks" with Israel. The PA had previously vowed not to return to any sort of negotiations until Israel halted all settlement construction throughout the West Bank including occupied Jerusalem. Israel defied requests from US President Barack Obama to stop construction, but instead of standing up to Israel, the Americans pressured the PA to return to negotiations without any conditions or guarantees.

Thus the settlement boycott acts as a cover for the abject weakness of the PA to stick to even its most modest promises, let alone extract real concessions from Israel or its American sponsors during negotiations. Equally clear, it is a diversion. According to numerous reports, Israelis and Palestinians agreed in principle during the proximity talks on a "land swap." This is not new; it has long been a peace process industry article of faith that in a two-state solution Israel would remove only token settlements while the vast majority, especially those in and around occupied Jerusalem which house at least 80 percent of the settlers, would be annexed to Israel. In exchange for receiving East Jerusalem and large parts of the West Bank, Israel would give the Palestinians some sand dunes near Gaza (the so-called Halutza Sands) and some remote barren hills south of Hebron.

So while the Ramallah leaders -- who have no mandate or authority from the Palestinian people whether under the PA or the Palestine Liberation Organization to negotiate on their behalf -- make a show of boycotting settlement goods, their actual agenda is to promote economic normalization, undermine BDS and legitimize the settlements through "negotiations."

Where the PA does remain firmly committed to boycott is in its support for Israel's total blockade and siege of the Palestinian people in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Despite occasional lip service to ending the blockade, Ramallah PA leaders always stress that it should end only according to the terms dictated by the Quartet: that the US- and Israeli-backed PA militias should return to Gaza to police and repress the Palestinians there on behalf of Israel just as they are doing in the West Bank.

The PA in Ramallah has, notably, offered no support to the courageous international flotilla currently en route to Gaza in another attempt to break the blockade amid threats of violence from Israel. Why has the PA not called on its "friends" and benefactors in the "international community" to send their navies to protect this peaceful, nonviolent flotilla and ensure it gets through to Gaza? In practice, PA policy amounts to full support for the siege.

Some people have been impressed by the PA's anti-settlement campaign considering it a "step in the right direction." But no one should be fooled. Palestinians and their allies should remain clearly focused on the simple truth that those who continue to coordinate with the Israeli occupation forces to hunt down Palestinians by night cannot don the mantle of popular resistance by day.

--

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

KeesjeMaduraatje 5

Ik vrees dat Keesjemaduraatje, oftewel Kees Broer, nu helemaal het contact met de werkelijkheid kwijt is:

25 mei 2010

Genoeg is Genoeg: SP haalt haatwebsite van Anja Meulenbelt uit de lucht

onverwachts en toch nog verheugend: de website van Anja Meulenbelt, Senator voor Haat en Terreur, is door de SP uit de lucht gehaald. Kijk zelf maar:

www.anjameulenbelt.sp.nl

http://keesjemaduraatje.web-log.nl/keesjemaduraatje/2010/05/genoeg-is-genoe.html

KeesjeMaduraatje 4

Keesjemaduraatje nu en daarboven in 1980.

keesjemaduraatje heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "KeesjeMaduraatje 3" achtergelaten:

het gaat om deze foto:
http://keesjemaduraatje.web-log.nl/keesjemaduraatje/2010/04/het-bewijs-kees.html

Et voila, daar hebben we het begin van een verklaring. Kees Broer, de rookbommenwerper, viste altijd al achter het net. Dacht hij de wereldpers te halen en ziedaar een actie met 'niet veel nieuwswaarde meer,' omdat anderen iets veel opzienbarenders deden dan het werpen van een lullig rookbommetje, waarbij net als die terrorist in het vliegtuig een kledingstuk van hem in de brand vloog, of in zijn eigen woorden: 'mijn jas was wel een beetje aangebrand.' Ook dat nog.

En zo ging het zijn hele leven lang. Geboren als pechvogel zat er tenslotte niets anders op dan extreem-rechts te worden, hoewel ook dat natuurlijk geen verlossing zal bieden. Gods wegen zijn ondoorgrondelijk en zelden aangenaam.

http://www.nuentoen.nl/fotos/110856/werper-rookbom-wordt-op-de-dam-gearresteerd.html

http://keesjemaduraatje.web-log.nl/keesjemaduraatje/2010/04/het-bewijs-kees.html