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“Since Israel’s brutal 21-day assault on Gaza in the winter of ’08-’09 (dubbed by Israeli politicians as Operation Cast Lead) that led to over 1,400 Palestinian deaths – of which 930 were civilians including many women and children – followed by its deadly raid on a civilian Turkish ship headed to Gaza in June 2010 that resulted in nine casualties and dozens injured, many Palestinians as well as their advocates in the West have spoken of a significant “sea change” in the western media’s once hegemonic support for Israel. However, since this latest military operation began – already claiming more than 30 lives and injuring hundreds – evidence of any changing tide has been scant.”
Well we need to have *some* happy news from the occupied territories no? It can’t always be more innocents dead and heavy handed state oppression can it?
“Some mainstream liberal media outlets have discussed the imbalance between the rocket launches from Gaza resistance groups and the attacks executed by one of the mightiest armies in the world. While some may take this as a sign of newfound “support” or “empathy” for Palestinians, this is precarious logic. If Hamas’ rockets were to become more powerful, as they are proving to be, will these outlets retract their critique of Israel’s actions? Or is support for Palestinians contingent on them remaining “victims” and will vanish at any sign of their resistance becoming more powerful or effective?”
Perspective is always so important. The farcical Fox News is readily distinguishable as propaganda, but are we ready to see the propaganda function of other media organizations, the BBC for instance.
“A focus on “who started it?” consumes the mainstream media’s discussion on the latest violence, leading commentators to discuss timelines as though they were opinions rather than verifiable facts to consider and, to a one, even getting that wrong, with media outlets from NPR to the NYT declaring that Israel’s – rather than Hamas’ – strikes were retaliatory.
Meanwhile pundits feverishly try to tease out a political motive to explain Israel’s latest massive assault on Gaza. So far, the realpolitick most commonly alluded to is the impending Israeli election, scheduled for January 22, giving Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak strategic reasons for timing an assault on Gaza now.”
Defending the nation is always a great political platform to run on, even when you are the aggressor.
“When it comes to looking behind the scenes of Israeli military assaults on Gaza (or Lebanon), there is always a general hoping for a promotion, a politician looking for votes, and an arms dealer making profits, but the rationale that enables that triumvirate to enact the lethal policies we are seeing play out in Gaza right now is the same one that allows the Israeli government to calculate how many calories each Palestinian in the Gaza Strip needs to survive, and to then intentionally allow fewer trucks and supplies in to meet that need. And it’s the same rationale that motivates the Israeli occupation authorities to prevent construction in Area C of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to encourage widespread drug addiction in Area B, and to make near-daily incursions into Area A to arrest political leaders, activists and journalists.
It’s the rationale of a coloniser, who wants land but not the people on it.
The other pervasive rationale has been that Israel is “testing” the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt as well as, to a degree, President Obama in his second and last term in office.”
Here in the West and in the East we have our religious nutters. What is not being covered as much in the media here is the moderate response to the “film” the Innocence of Muslims. Avaaz.org has a great article which I’ve taken bits out of and posted for your reading pleasure.
Seven things you may have missed in the ‘Rage’:
Like everyone else, many Muslims find the 13 minute Islamophobic video “Innocence of Muslims” trashy and offensive. Protests have spread quickly, tapping into understandable and lasting grievances about neo-colonialist US and western foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as religious sensitivities about depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. But the news coverage often obscures some important points:
1. Early estimates put participation in anti-film protests at between 0.001 and 0.007% of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims – a tiny fraction of those who marched for democracy in the Arab spring.
2. The vast majority of protesters have been peaceful. The breaches of foreign embassies were almost all organised or fuelled by elements of the Salafist movement, a radical Islamist group that is most concerned with undermining more popular moderate Islamist groups.
3. Top Libyan and US officials are divided over whether the killing of the US ambassador to Libya was likely pre-planned to coincide with 9/11, and therefore not connected to the film.
4. Apart from attacks by radical militant groups in Libya and Afghanistan, a survey of news reports on 20 September suggested that actual protesters had killed a total of zero people. The deaths cited by media were largely protesters killed by police.
5. Pretty much every major leader, Muslim and western, has condemned the film, and pretty much every leader, Muslim and western, has condemned any violence that might be committed in response.
6. The pope visited Lebanon at the height of the tension, and Hezbollah leaders attended his sermon, refrained from protesting the film until he left, and called for religious tolerance. Yes, this happened.
7. After the attack in Benghazi, ordinary people turned out on the streets in Benghazi and Tripoli with signs, many of them in English, apologising and saying the violence did not represent them or their religion.
Add to that the number of really big news stories that were buried last week to make room for front page, angry Muslim “Clash” coverage. In Russia tens of thousands of protesters marched through Moscow to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese and Spaniards turned out for anti-austerity protests; and more than a million Catalans marched for independence.
Islam, religion of Peace burns down American Embassy illustrating dedication to rational non-violent ways of resolving disputes.
This just in the from insano-delusional land (credit CBC.ca):
“Many Muslims find it offensive to depict the Prophet Muhammad in any fashion, much less in an insulting way.
This week’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Egypt and Libya, the latter of which claimed the lives of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others on Tuesday, erupted after a 14-minute trailer of an obscure movie by a California real-estate developer. The film was posted on YouTube in English and later in Egyptian Arabic.
Ultraconservative Islamists were suspected of being behind the attack in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Advocating a strict interpretation of Islam, they have bulldozed Sufi shrines and mosques that house tombs in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and other cities, including ancient sites dating back to 5,000 years ago.”
So, like the danish cartoons, the publishing of this film somehow gives people the right to flip out the buttered insane fuck-crumpets and burn shit up and kill people? This is part of the trailer that has incensed the reality challenged.
Wow. This film ranks below Poolboy:Drowning out the Fury on my list of awful movies.
So, full marks for beating out PoolBoy, but not really a honour one should be striving toward. Let’s recap so far, some dude makes a crumby, ass-pustule of a flick and because it makes fun of your godhead of choice *you* get to kill people.
“The movie trailer depicts Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres. An amateur cast performs a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as revelations about Muhammad, whose obedient followers are presented as a cadre of goons. The film was being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States, and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors according to Sam Bacile, who wrote and directed it.”
Yep. I can totally see how shedding innocent blood is called for in cases like this. Chris Stevens and three others were destined to give their lives to fanatics hepped up on righteous god-juice over a D-list movie.
Let me reiterate, religion is harmful to people and society if it is not kept in check by a strong secular state the kind of irrational bullshite that our muslim friends demonstrated in Libya happens. Believing in magic and mythology for the nth time, has no place in the modern world. We commit plenty of atrocities without the help of those who lose their shit when you depict their ooga-booga of choice.
Indeed, religion does poison everything it touches and creates the nightmare world which we striving to leave behind us.
The overarching apparatus of state is plainly evinced by the actions of one president elected on Hope and Change.
Watch what happens when you mix broken foreign policy with religion…
“One of Pakistan’s most influential clerics has renounced his support for polio immunisation, claiming that the programme is a cover for American spies.”
Pakistan needs less of this particular brand of religious stupidity. The stupid is compounded by the bullshite American cloak and dagger games being played in Pakistan.
“But now he says he cannot back the policy after it emerged that the CIA had used a fake hepatitis drive to hunt for Osama bin Laden last year.
Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who organised the vaccination campaign, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison and his actions caused a wave of paranoia about foreign aid workers.”
Thank you America your botched war is screwing up yet another county in your drive to be the imperial power of this century as well. Newsflash – China isn’t going to let you; get over yourself and stop killing brown people for not agreeing to be vassals.
“Pakistan is one of three countries where the disease remains endemic. Only 22 cases have been reported this year – compared with 59 in the same period in 2011 – and hopes were high that it could soon be declared polio free.
However, hard-line clerics have long opposed what they suspect is a Western conspiracy against Muslims. As a result health workers carefully cultivated moderate leaders, who issued fatwas – or religious rulings – declaring vaccination to be in line with Islamic teaching.”
There is just so much wrong going on here. Vaccinations to eradicate polio are a fundamentally good idea. This fundamentally good idea is trumped though when Western spy agencies use them to further their foreign policy goals. Then you get backlash like this:
But Haq said that it made no sense for foreign agencies to keep children free from disease while bombing Pakistan.
“If you people are that much curious about the health of people living over there, it means that you are keeping these people alive just to kill them by drones,” he said.
The sad fatalism of marginalized people. Wrong, but understandable given the circumstances. Never forget that we are categorically *not* the good guys for much of the world. If we’d taken the time and effort simply not to perpetuate misery and destruction on poor coloured folk we might actually have some respect in the world.
I’m sure this new legislation in France will impress the hell out of libertarians world wide. The French have identified that statistically, alcohol is involved in some 30% of traffic collisions. The solution? Mandatory breathalysers in every car. Al Jazeera breaks this story wide open:
“A new motoring law has come into effect in France, whereby it will be compulsory for drivers to carry breathalyser kits in their vehicles.From Sunday, motorists and motorcyclists risk facing an on-the-spot fine unless they travel with two single-use devices. The law is part of a government initiative to reduce the figures of drink-driving related fatalities. The new regulations, which exclude mopeds, will be fully enforced and include foreign drivers from November 1, following a four-month grace period. Anyone failing to produce a breathalyser after that date will receive an 11 euro fine.”
This is step in the right direction as people continue to drink and drive killing themselves and others by the thousand. Good show France. :)
Oh, here is how to beat the Breathalyser, it will only cost you your dignity.
From Alter.net Richard D. Wolffe writes:
“In May 2012, I had occasion to visit the city of Arrasate-Mondragon, in the Basque region of Spain. It is the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation (MC), a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production.
MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).
As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker’s salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)”
The ideas of egalitarianism and equality can work and work well within society, Mondragon is but one example of how we could be organizing our society in a more just mode of production.
“Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.
MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.
The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise’s net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.
The largest corporation in the Basque region, MC is also one of Spain’s top ten biggest corporations (in terms of sales or employment). Far better than merely surviving since its founding in 1956, MC has grown dramatically. Along the way, it added a co-operative bank, Caja Laboral (holding almost $25bn in deposits in 2010). And MC has expanded internationally, now operating over 77 businesses outside Spain. MC has proven itself able to grow and prosper as an alternative to – and competitor of – capitalist organizations of enterprise.”
We need to see more of this in our business news.
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