Zoeken in deze blog 🔎🔎

zondag 27 september 2020

Understanding Apartheid, Moving to Freedom, Justice and Equality

26 september 2020

Online: 1, 8, 15 en 22 okt. Understanding Apartheid, Moving to Freedom, Justice and Equality

Webinar Series: Understanding Apartheid, Moving to Freedom, Justice and Equality
Organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK
ATTENTION: 19H00 NETHERLANDS TIME
TICKETS: https://bit.ly/LivedApartheid
Since its foundation, Israel has built and maintained a system of institutionalised racist discrimination against all parts of the Palestinian people, whether living under occupation, in Israel, or as refugees and exiles.
The seminal United Nations report by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley in 2017 clearly laid this out, contributing to a shift in discourse. Israel’s passage of the nation state law, followed by its publicly stated aim of annexing at least 30% of the West Bank – following its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights – has further exposed its apartheid reality.
The question for the movement for Palestinian rights is how to transition from the ugliness of the present day to a future of freedom, justice and equality? What would this look like on the ground, irrespective of political frameworks?
This weekly series of webinars throughout October will tackle – but also go beyond – the way in which Israel’s practices meet the definition of apartheid under international law and their effect on Palestinians in all areas of their lives. Each speaker will be challenged not just to set out the past and present but also to outline ways to get from the present to a better future.
Thursday October 1st / 6pm / Apartheid within Israel: Sami Abu Shehadeh, Palestinian member of the Knesset for the Joint List. Sawsan Zaher, Lawyer and Director of Social and Economic Rights Unit at Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
Thursday October 8th / 6pm / Apartheid in the Occupied Territory: Diana Buttu, Palestinian-Canadian Lawyer and renowned analyst. Yara Harawi, Policy Fellow at al-Shabaka – the Palestinian policy network.
Thursday October 15th / 6pm / Apartheid in Exile: Sarona Bedwan, writer & works in educational outreach at Makan. Lubnah Shomali, Advocacy Unit Manager BADIL Resource for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights
Thursday October 22nd / 6pm /The Movement for Palestinian Rights: Setting the Agenda – Moving to Freedom: Hazem Jamjoum, policy member of Al Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. Marwa Fatafta, Palestinian writer, researcher and policy analyst based in Berlin.
TICKETS: https://bit.ly/LivedApartheid

 https://bdsnederland.nl/online-1-8-15-en-22-okt-understanding-apartheid-moving-to-freedom-justice-and-equality/



at Geen opmerkingen:

Apokalyps Nu!: Türkei und USA Plündern Norden Syriens

 

New post on Apokalyps Nu!

Türkei und USA plündern straflos den Norden Syriens

by DE-AB

27-09-20 11:05:00, 

Von der Türkei unterstützte Milizen beschlagnahmen Getreide in den Silos von Ras al-Ayn

Rick Sterling / 27. Sep 2020 - 

Grosse Medien berichten selten darüber: Die Türkei und die USA verletzen in Syrien in krasser Weise das Völkerrecht.

Seit Jahren plündert die Türkei ungestraft die Infrastruktur Syriens. Zwischen 2012 und 2015 wurden in Aleppo etwa 300 Fabriken abgebaut und in die Türkei gebracht. Aus Syriens Industrie-Hauptstadt Aleppo verluden türkische Kräfte Maschinen und Waren auf Lastwagen und verfrachteten sie über die Ãœbergänge Cilvegözü und Ceylanpinar in die Türkei. «Plündern» und «Terror» gehören zum Vokabular, wenn man die Syrische Geschichte erzählen will.

Ãœber 300'000 Menschen mussten flüchten 

Im Oktober 2019 marschierten türkische Truppen in Syrien ein und besetzen heute einen Streifen Land im Nordosten. Das Gebiet wird von türkischem Militär und pro-türkischen Söldnertruppen kontrolliert, die sich irreführend «Syrische Nationalarmee» nennen. Der Türkische Präsident Erdogan gab der Invasion den Namen «Operation Friedensfrühling» und sagte, das Ziel sei, eine «sichere Zone» einzurichten. In Wirklichkeit mussten 200’000 Syrerinnen und Syrer vor der Invasion fliehen und über 100’000 wurden permanent von ihren Häusern, Farmen, Arbeitsstellen und ihrem Lebensmittelpunkt vertrieben.

Die Besetzung von Nordsyrien im Vergleich mit der Annexion der Krim

upg. Die Annexion oder Sezession der Krim (27'000 Quadratkilometer) verletzte internationale Verträge. Zu Blutvergiessen kam es nicht, weil die Mehrheit der dortigen Bevölkerung den Beitritt zur russischen Föderation unterstützte. Westliche Journalisten und Touristen können unbegleitet auf die Krim reisen.

Anders im Autokratenregime unter Assad: Die türkische Besetzung eines breiten «Sicherheitsstreifens» und die US-Präsenz im nördlichen Erdölgebiet Syriens (beide insgesamt fast 20’000 Quadratkilometer) sind laut UNO-Charta ein Angriffskrieg. Die Annexion vertrieb rund 300'000 Menschen aus ihren Häusern. Weder westliche Journalisten noch Touristen können sich in den besetzten Gebieten Syriens frei bewegen.

Mit Sanktionen wurde aber nur Russland bestraft. Die Türkei und die USA bleiben von Sanktionen verschont. Denn in Syrien geht es darum, Assad und sein Klüngelregime zu stürzen. Würden allerdings Gewaltanwendungen, Zensur und Misswirtschaft es rechtfertigen, in einem Land militärisch einzugreifen, könnten Bevölkerungen vieler Staaten Opfer von Kriegen werden. Aus diesem Grund einigten sich die Staaten nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg auf die UNO-Charta, die eine strikte Nichteinmischung in die inneren Angelegenheiten eines Landes vorschreibt.

Das Uno-Verbot von Kriegen

Die Charta der UNO hat das Gewaltverbot in Artikel 2 verankert: «Alle Mitglieder unterlassen in ihren internationalen Beziehungen jede ...

 » Lees verder

at Geen opmerkingen:

A shocking blow to liberal Zionism

AOC’s withdrawal from Rabin memorial is shocking blow to liberal Zionism

BY   

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ. (PHOTO: WILLIAM B. PLOWMAN/NBC/NBC NEWSWIRE/GETTY IMAGES)

As you may know, a landmark event in the politics of Palestine took place yesterday: Congressional star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York withdrew from participation in an October memorial to Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister who was slain in 1995 by a rightwing extremist, after critics pointed out Rabin’s human rights record. 

Rabin is a liberal Zionist hero, maybe the greatest hero of liberal Zionism; and AOC’s withdrawal from an Americans for Peace Now virtual event to honor the 25th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination, hosted by actor Mandy Patinkin– “We would have peace today had he been with us all this time, I am absolutely certain of that,” Patinkin says– is a true shocker. 

Al Jazeera says that AOC’s office confirmed her withdrawal in an email. 

AOC’s sole comment on the event was a response yesterday to journalist Alex Kane of Jewish Currents, who had written: “In the US Rabin is viewed as a liberal peacemaker but Palestinians remember him for his brutal rule suppressing Palestinian protest during the First Intifada, as someone who reportedly ordered the breaking of Palestinian bones.” 

AOC wrote: 

Hey there – this event and my involvement was presented to my team differently from how it’s now being promoted. Thanks for pointing it out. Taking a look into this now.

Many Palestinians had assailed the appearance. Adalah Justice Project announced the withdrawal yesterday.

It’s official. @AOC has withdrawn her participation from an event memorializing Yitzhak Rabin. His legacy is one of violence and dispossession for Palestinians. Thank you AOC for listening to the lived experience of the Palestinian people.

The Electronic Intifada published an article by Ali Abunimah asking, “Why is AOC honoring a war criminal?” Abunimah wrote, “AOC shows total contempt for Palestinian lives by honoring Yitzhak Rabin, the unrepentent war criminal who personally oversaw the Lydda Death March [ethnic cleansing operation during the Nakba in 1948] and ordered soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian kids demanding freedom from occupation. Just disgusting!”

Diana Buttu describes Rabin as an architect of apartheid: 

Amount of whitewashing Rabin’s crimes is incredible. While he was purportedly “seeking peace” he continued to build Israeli settlements and when a settler massacred Palestinians in Hebron in 1994 instead of removing settlers he fortified them. He had choices: he chose apartheid.

Noura Erakat also describes the trap of the two-state solution: 

Thank you @AOC for modeling humility and principle. The fact that the liberal Zionist camp in the US is trying to resist Trump’s Israeli apartheid by advocating for putting Palestinians back into the Oslo trap- liberals’ Apartheid- at least makes the fault lines clear for all.

Novelist Susan Abulhawa tweeted video of soldiers brutalizing Palestinian teens with rocks and wrote: 

Yitzak Rabin was the architect of the “Break Their Bones” doctrine, whereby Israeli soldiers literally went house to house and broke the bones of entire generations of Palestinians. For shame @AOC is attending a celebration of his life. Here’s a glimpse of his legacy.

Alex Kane’s comment on Rabin evidently caused AOC to withdraw. He reports she did so because she wasn’t told it was a memorial to Rabin.

Source told me that @PeaceNowUS framed event as focusing on Oslo and Rabin, and APN wanted her to speak on her Congressional work on the issue. It wasn’t framed to her as a Rabin memorial. That’s why she canceled.

Kane’s interpretation:

Here’s the bottom line on @AOC withdrawing from the Rabin memorial: This would not have happened five years ago. Here we have a wildly influential Congresswoman listening to Palestinians and the broader Palestinian rights movement.

Democratic Majority for Israel is outraged. It tweeted a photo of Yasser Arafatshaking Rabin’s hand at the Oslo signing ceremony at the White House in 1993. 

Congresswoman, the guy on the right who brought a gun to the UN rostrum, murdered civilians, highjacked airplanes & blew up pizza parlors & discos not only shook Yitzhak Rabin’s hand but paid a condolence call on his widow. Now you have questions about honoring Rabin? Seriously?

The evaporation of Rabin’s image clearly reflects the dismal failure of the Oslo process. The peace process has turned out to be a giant charade led by a mediator that was actually Israel’s advocate, the United States. If it had produced a Palestinian state, as was promised, within five years, Rabin might still be heroic. As it is, he is just another Israeli leader who hornswoggled Palestinians into sacrificing control of their own lands and lives. And plays on Broadway commemorating Oslo win Tony awards.

That is the great news here, the shift in the American discourse. Even as many Democrats try to run to Trump’s right on Israel and Joe Biden brags about all the arms that he gave Israel, the progressive camp is unified around democratic principles: It’s time for Palestinians to have basic, and equal, rights under Israeli rule. 

As I have written, the pressure is on liberal Zionists and progressive Democrats. The rightwing Israel supporters have no problem with apartheid or occupation and they don’t sanctify the two-state solution. But liberal Zionists oppose apartheid, and they continue to parrot the two-state mantra as an answer, though it’s proved to be a delusion. What do you really care about, democracy or Jewish nationalism? AOC’s action highlights that contradiction, and if/once Biden is elected, the battle will break out in full inside the Democratic Party.

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/09/aocs-withdrawal-from-rabin-memorial-is-shocking-blow-to-liberal-zionism/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-email-mailpoet




 

at Geen opmerkingen:

Why Liberals Hate Leftists

Why Liberals Hate Leftists

Caitlin Johnstone
Sep 27 · 4 min read

Liberals hate leftists. Hate them, hate them, hate them.

They don’t often admit it of course. Admitting you hate those to your left at least as much as you hate those to your right would cause a lot of cognitive dissonance for those who think of themselves as being on the left, and it would weaken their arguments considerably.

But they do. Liberals hate leftists, for a number of reasons.

Further Reading:  

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-liberals-hate-leftists-4044f9207a88





at Geen opmerkingen:

ASSANGE HEARING

 

ASSANGE HEARING: JUDGE GRANTS DEFENSE FOUR WEEKS TO PREPARE FINAL ARGUMENT

 
| EDUCATE!

Above photo: Old Bailey.

5:49 am EDT:  Judge Vanessa Baraitser has granted the defense four weeks to prepare it closing argument, saying that her decision would come after the Nov. 4 U.S. election one way or the other. She had been previously reluctant to give more than a week to the defense. 

Baraitser set the date of final arguments for Nov. 16.  Fitzgerald had told the judge that:

“It seems unlikely for you to make a judgement before Nov. 3 and you would have to bear in mind that the future is uncertain. Much of what we say about Trump is because this proceeding was initiated by Trump,….and some elements of the case would be worse if Trump were there [re-elected].”  

Baraitser had raised the issue of the election and how it might impact the hearing. She said: “That’s one of the factors going into my decision.”

“I agree that one way or the other my decision will come after an election in the United States. For that reason I find no reason not to give you the four weeks,” she said.

Baraitser said she could not yet set a judgement day. “That means for your client there will be no decision until the new year, if he appreciates that.”

Reacting to her decision, Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said: “District Judge Vanessa Baraitser has acknowledged what has been clear since even before the first indictment against Julian Assange was unsealed — that this is a politically motivated prosecution.”

5:28 am EDT: Defense attorney Mark Summers asked Judge Vanessa Baraitser to give defense witness Patrick Eller, chief executive of Metadata Forensics, an hour to read a prosecution bundle of statements sent to the defense at 11:30 pm on Thursday night. 

Summers said that Eller’s written testimony was submitted nine months ago. Summers said it has two propositions: “that the alleged passcode hash conspiracy was impossible, but even if it were possible, it had no utility to what is attributed to it.” 

The U.S. government has charged Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion with Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks’ source. 

Summers said that U.S. Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg replied in his affidavit initially only to Eller’s first proposition, and only late at night on Thursday to the second.

Summers appealed for an hour for Eller to read the prosecution’s last minute submissions and Baraitser granted it. 

Eller is described on his LinkedIn page as a digital forensic examiner, expert witness, principal consultant, adjunct professor, disabled veteran and retired special agent.   

Baraitser Refuses New Defense Witness To Challenge Kromberg

8:00 am EDT: Baraitser has refused two defense witness statements that Fitzgerald proposed as providing “the other side of the coin” to Kromberg’s affidavit regarding the condition of U.S. prisons, specifically the Alexandria Detention Center, where Assange would be held pre-trial and during the trial, and ADX Florence in Colorado where he would go if convicted.  Kromberg, who maintains there’s no solitary confinement at the ADC, has refused to make himself available for cross examination.

“We have no right to cross examine Kromberg, who can say what ever wants and we have no right to challenge him,” Fitzgerald told Baraitser. “They have no divine right to have the last word.”  Fitzgerald had proposed as his witnesses a former chief psychiatrist at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and a forensic psychiatrist who has made many visits to ADX. 

Baraitser ruled against in the interests of time, she said. She said enough countervailing testimony from defense psychiatrists about U.S. prions had been heard.

Dispute Over Attempt to Crack a Password

10:28 am EDT: Testimony with Patrick Eller was highly complex and inaccessible to the less than computer literate. The essence of the debate between the sides appeared to be whether Chelsea Manning needed a password to access classified material and to download music videos.

Eller testified that from the Manning court-martial that she did not need a password to gain access to classified data.  But using a local computer she would need a password to download music videos and computer games.

Eller said Manning wouldn’t have had to use a password to remove classified files from a government computer to her own and send them to WikiLeaks because she used a Linux CD to boot her computer, permitting her to bypass Windows security features.

Lewis on cross examination tried to demonstrate that Assange could help Manning crack the password because of a vulnerability that Microsoft discovered. Lewis was leaving the impression, contrary to what Eller had testified, that the password had to be cracked to obtain the classified documents.  But the indictment against Assange stated clearly that Manning had legal access to all classified matter up to Secret. 

Eller came back at Lewis explaining that on the same day Microsoft released a patch that fixed the vulnerability and made it “infeasible” to hack a password. Stunned, Lewis said that Assange has “boasted” that he was an expert hacker and couldn’t crack the password despite the patch. Eller said it was possible, but withdrew that statement on re-direct.

At one point Lewis asked Eller how he knew for sure, having not seen the government’s evidence, that Assange had not helped Manning crack the hash passcode.

“I understand you said in examination that as a fact the password had not been cracked. How do you know that?” Lewis said.

“Based on the conversation [on jabber between Assange and Manning] I found no evidence,” Eller said.  

But the indictment against Assange itself says the Manning and Assange failed to crack the password.  

The U.S. extradition request also makes clear that “prior to the formation of the password-cracking agreement, Manning had already provided WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of documents classified up to the SECRET level that she downloaded from departments and agencies of the United States, including the Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports and Iraq war-related significant activity reports.”

It’s not clear how much of the dense, technical detail Baraitser was able to understand, especially as Summers failed to lay out in laymen’s terms what he was trying to establish.

During the first week of the hearing in February, the defense clearly stated that Assange was trying to help Manning crack a password so that she could hide her identity when downloading unauthorized music and video games, a point that Summers did not clearly make on Friday.

10:21 am EDT: Court has recessed early for the day.  The hearing resumes on Monday.

https://popularresistance.org/assange-hearing-judge-grants-defense-four-weeks-to-prepare-final-argument/



at Geen opmerkingen:

U.S. is in Middle East ‘to protect Israel,’ Trump says

 

U.S. is in Middle East ‘to protect Israel’ not for oil, Trump says

Trump tells us the real reason the United States since the Clinton regime has been destroying Israel’s Middle East neighbors — to protect Israel!

It’s not oil, it’s not “terrorism” (the result of our interventions), it’s to make Israel dominant in the region.  What other president would be this honest.  The “war on terror” was a war for Israel.

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/09/u-s-is-in-middle-east-to-protect-israel-not-for-oil-trump-says/

BY PHILIP WEISS  SEPTEMBER 12, 2020

TRUMP SPEAKS IN WINSTON-SALEM, NC, SEPT. 8, 2020. SCREENSHOT FROM NBC NEWS VIDEO.

Four days ago, Donald Trump said the U.S. isn’t involved in the Middle East for oil, but because we “want to protect Israel.” The comments have gone all but unreported in the mainstream press.

Trump made the comment during a rally in Winston-Salem, N.C. on Sept. 8, when he was bragging about America’s energy independence, which he said Joe Biden would undermine if he gets the White House (minute 47):

I like being energy independent, don’t you? I’m sure that most of you noticed when you go to fill up your tank in your car, oftentimes it’s below two dollars. You say how the hell did this happen? Thank you President Trump! Look at your electric bills and everything else– these guys, your electric would go up four, five, six times. The Green New Deal it’s called the Green New Nightmare. While I’m president, America will remain the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. We will remain energy independent. It should be for many many years to come.  The fact is, we don’t have to be in the Middle East, other than we want to protect Israel. We’ve been very good to Israel. Other than that, we don’t have to be in the Middle East. You know there was a time we needed desperately oil, we don’t need that anymore. We have more than they do, isn’t that nice? After years of rebuilding other countries, we are finally building our country.

The American Conservative’s Barbara Boland is the only reporter who seems to have picked up Trump’s remarks. No one else cares, evidently.

Do you remember all the arguments about Why are we engaged in so many conflicts in the Middle East? And why we are going to war in Iraq? And the mainstream default position is that it’s because of oil. Even though we lost concessions in Iraq.

These comments by Trump, the disrupter, tie into the long but shadowy pedigree of analysis from policymakers that we invaded Iraq to make Israel safer. Like the former head of the 911 Commission who said that the threat to Israel was the motivation for the war, but that was “the threat that dare not speak its name.” Or Colin Powell’s comment that we went into Iraq because the Secretary of Defense bought the neoconservative arguments of “the JINSA crowd,” referring to the Israel lobby group the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Trump touches on a larger realpolitik understanding of the creation of Israel, that it helped foster unrest throughout the region. As the State Department warned that it would do, in the 1940s.  But don’t expect anyone in our media to consider such ideas…

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/09/27/u-s-is-in-middle-east-to-protect-israel-not-for-oil-trump-says/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=us_is_in_middle_east_to_protect_israel_not_for_oil_trump_says&utm_term=2020-09-27



at Geen opmerkingen:
Abonneren op: Posts (Atom)

Joanna's Narcissism (3)

With artificially enhanced lips, the Eastern Bloc attempts to connect with the West. In what kind of world does 28-year-old Bulgarian Joanna...