The Daily Telegraph today appealed against a high court ruling that awarded George Galloway, the former Labour MP, £150,000 damages and costs after the newspaper published documents about him it found in Iraq in 2003.
guardian.co.uk
This phase of introspection reflects the broader trend. I spoke yesterday with Eival Gilady, who served as a close adviser to the Israeli prime minister on the Gaza disengagement. His message was clear: the ball is now in the Palestinians’ court. Under the internationally endorsed road map, the next step is for the Palestinians to put their own house in order, starting with a crackdown on terrorism.
If that were to happen, then Israel might make a further move. Revealingly, Gilady cites the unilateral disarmament steps taken by Mikhail Gorbachev, which paved the way for a mutually agreed arms pact later. “When you act unilaterally, it doesn’t stay unilateral,” he says. In other words, Israel moves first on Gaza. Then Abbas stabilises the PA. Then Israel will act again. Not a peace process exactly, but a series of one-sided moves: call it sequential unilateralism.
Under that logic, what would Israel’s next act be? In the past few days, the Israeli press has been bubbling with hints from key officials at further unilateral pullouts, this time from the West Bank. The scenario seems to be that Sharon sits tight for now, sees off Bibi, fights, wins an election next year – and then stages a series of mini-disengagements. Dr Gary Sussman, an analyst at Tel Aviv University, says the map for those withdrawals is already laid out. “The fence is the border,” he says, confident that Israel would pull back, more or less, to the line traced by the wall, or security barrier, it has built through the West Bank. That would entail dismantling a few isolated settlements – and keeping the large settlement blocs.
Such a move would see Israel out of, perhaps, 50% or 60% of the West Bank. Combined with Gaza that would represent the de facto Palestinian state, promised by the road map and now routinely demanded by George Bush, Tony Blair and everyone else.
The old guard of Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, are said to be deeply depressed at this prospect. For such an entity would leave them no access to Jerusalem and would represent substantially less territory than the Clinton parameters promised in December 2000. It would not be the two-state solution they sought for two decades but, says Sussman, something less: “A one and three-quarter state solution.”
What’s more, Sharon would make this move and win not just international acceptance but praise. The Gaza withdrawal won plaudits from the UN and EU; even Pakistan broke Muslim ranks to start a diplomatic engagement with Israel last month. If there were to be more pullouts in the West Bank, Sharon would be a hero once more. There would be no pressure on him; it would all be on the Palestinians, who would rapidly be cast as grudging and difficult for not receiving these chunks of the West Bank with gratitude.
guardian.co.uk
A one-state solution
…The question of whether Zionism can be reconciled with democracy has always been at the heart of the debate on the Palestinian problem. But it has dropped off the broader political agenda partly because a majority of Israeli Jews have been resistant to anything that smacks of a challenge to the very premise on which the Zionist enterprise was built, and partly due to the belief (on both sides) that the Palestinian problem is ultimately resolvable via a territorial partition that would separate the mass of Arabs from Jews.
However, a number of recent developments have challenged these assumptions. With an unbridled settlement policy now matched by a “separation wall” that merely consecrates the divide between Palestinians and Israeli settlers within the occupied West Bank, Sharon and his predecessors have all but destroyed the possibility of a viable and sustainable territorial settlement along national lines.
A Basic History of Zionism and its Relation to Judaism
It seems a bitter irony that a movement that initially saw itself as progressive, liberal and secular should find itself in an alliance with, and held to ransom by, the most illiberal reactionary forces. In my view this was inevitable from its inception although the founders, and most of us (including even people like myself, growing up in Palestine in the thirties), did not foresee this and certainly would not have wished it.
Nowadays the deliberate blurring of the distinction between Zionism and Judaism, which includes a rewriting of ancient as well as modern history, is exploited to stifle any criticism of Israel’s policies and actions, however extreme and inhuman they may be. This, incidentally, also plays directly into anti-Semitic prejudices by equating Israeli arrogance, brutality and complete denial of basic human rights to non-Jews with general Jewish characteristics.
Zionism has now assumed the all-embracing mantle of righteousness. It claims to represent and to speak for all Jews and has adopted the slogan of “my country right or wrong.” The West tolerates Israel’s continuous breaches of human rights–violations that it would not tolerate if perpetrated by any other country. Few Western states and not many Jews dare take a stand against Israel, particularly as many of the former still feel a sense of unease and guilt about the holocaust which Zionist Jews inside and outside Israel have exploited in what to me seems an almost obscene manner. In the USA, the Jewish Zionist lobby is still strong enough to keep successive governments on board. Moreover, the USA regards Israel as an important strategic ally in its fight against Middle Eastern “rogue” states which have supplanted the Soviet Union as the great satanic enemy of the free world.
The national conversation about New Orleans has shifted from relief to reconstruction. While alliances form among local and national elites, the majority of the city’s population faces being shut out of the discussion entirely. New Orleans is less than 30% white, but the white power structure is poised to seize control of the debate over the city’s future, while New Orleans’ distinct legacies of colonialism, white supremacy and Jim Crow, along with the personal loss and devastation faced by most city residents, has created a cocktail of obstacles in the path of forming a strong and unified resistance.
New Orleans artist, writer and muslim community activist Kelly Crosby writes, “New Orleans was at one time the heart of Creole country – octoroons, quadroons and mulattos. It was very common for French and Spanish aristocrats to keep Creole mistresses… There was also the forced concubinage of Black slave women…throw in the mixing between Native Americans and African Americans and what you get is Creole. My great, great grandmother could have passed for white, or passe blanc, as they used to call it.”
The Creole population, historically based in the 7th Ward Neighborhood, is seen by many as a wealthier, more conservative voting block, more aligned with white interests. And the Creole community is disproportionately represented in New Orleans business and political elite. As one New Orleanian said to me recently, “New Orleans has never had a Black mayor, we’ve only had White and Creole mayors.”
This white supremacist dynamic has also affected alliances between Black New Orleanians and other people of color, such as the city’s immigrant populations. As in many cities, tensions flare between immigrant business owners, who due to forces of economics generally have stores in poor Black communities, and community residents, who often see them as part the power structure. Crosby quotes her father as saying, “There is no way for African-American Muslims and immigrant Muslims to come together on anything in this community until we all address the problem of Muslim-owned corner stores.”
zmag.org
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – A retired elementary teacher who was repeatedly punched in the head by police in an incident caught on videotape said Monday he was not drunk, put up no resistance and was baffled by what happened.
Robert Davis said he had returned to New Orleans to check on property his family owns in the storm-ravaged city, and was out looking to buy cigarettes when he was beaten and arrested Saturday night in the French Quarter.
Police have alleged that the 64-year-old Davis was publicly intoxicated, a charge he strongly denied as he stood on the street corner where the incident played out Saturday.
“I haven’t had a drink in 25 years,” Davis said. He had stitches beneath his left eye, a bandage on his left hand and complained of soreness in his back and aches in his left shoulder.
A federal civil rights investigation was begun in the case. Davis is black; the three city police officers seen on the tape are white.
But Davis, his attorney and police spokesman Marlon Defillo all said they do not believe race was an issue.
“He does not see it as a racial thing,” said Davis’ lawyer, Joseph Bruno.
apnews.myway.com
CARACAS, Venezuela – The White House may be focused on Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez’s most pressing concern seems to be the Bush administration. Or, as he frequently puts it, the administration’s grand plans to kill him and invade this oil-rich country.
The threats are so great, Mr. Chávez has said, that he has been forced to cancel numerous public appearances and create a civilian militia force that will make the Yankee hordes “bite the dust.” And he warns that if the Americans are so foolish as to invade, “you can forget the Venezuelan oil.”
“If the government of the United States attempts to commit the foolhardy enterprise of attacking us, it would be embarked on a 100-year war,” Mr. Chávez told Ted Koppel in a “Nightline” interview in September. “We are prepared. They would not manage to control Venezuela, the same way they haven’t been able to control Iraq.”
Wherever he can – in speeches, interviews, inaugurations of public works projects, his weekly television show – Mr. Chávez rings the alarm bell. “If something happens to me,” he warned in August, “the responsible one will be President George W. Bush.”
With every warning about Mr. Danger – the Venezuelan government’s title for Mr. Bush – American officials offer weary denials, a flurry of them coming after Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster and Bush supporter, suggested this summer on his television show that the United States should assassinate the Venezuelan president.
[On the CNN program “Late Edition” on Oct. 9, Mr. Robertson was back on the attack, citing unidentified sources who accused Mr. Chávez of sending “either $1 million or $1.2 million in cash” to Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks and asserting that Venezuela was trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity. The Venezuelan vice president, José Vicente Rangel, dismissed Mr. Robertson’s remarks, saying, “He’s crazy, at the very least.”]
With each threat and criticism from the north, real or imagined, Mr. Chávez lashes back, seemingly thriving on the atmosphere of confrontation.
nytimes.com
Yeah right, crazy Chavez.
Aid began to flood into Pakistan yesterday as the death toll from the weekend’s earthquake continued to spiral and anger over the slow pace of the recovery effort boiled over in remote parts of Kashmir, which have been without supplies for days.
Consignments of food, medical supplies, tents and sniffer dogs were landed in Islamabad as the authorities struggled to get relief to devastated areas. Key highways have been blocked by landslides and many communities have been without water and electricity for days.
In Pakistan, officials said the death toll would reach 40,000 by the end of the week. In Indian-administered Kashmir, the number of dead had passed 800, with more than 10,000 people still missing in the mountainous region in Kupwara district, near the India-Pakistan frontier.
guardian.co.uk
Scientists have called for a more balanced approach in distributing the billions of pounds available for controlling tropical diseases. In a paper published today, they said that a focus by governments and charities on the big three tropical diseases – HIV, malaria and tuberculosis – had left millions of the poorest people in Africa without treatment for a range of illnesses.
The neglected diseases, which include schistosomiasis, river blindness, ascariasis, elephantiasis and trachoma, affect more than 750 million people and kill at least 500,000 every year.
guardian.co.uk
There will be as many as 50 million environmental refugees in the world in five years’ time.
That is the conclusion of experts at the United Nations University, who say that a new definition of “environmental refugee” is urgently needed.
They believe that already environmental degradation forces as many people away from their homes as political and social unrest.
The UNU issued its statement to mark UN Day for Disaster Reduction.
“There are many different environmental issues involved and there can be interactions between them,” said Janos Bogardi, director of the United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn, Germany.
“In poorer rural areas especially, one of the biggest sources of refugees is land degradation and desertification, which may be caused by unsustainable land use interacting with climate change, amplified by population growth,” he told the BBC News website.
“A second issue is flooding, caused I would say by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere super-imposed with probably some natural fluctuations.”
bbc.co.uk
WASHINGTON — In a more hopeful time, buoyed by the promise of science, it was thought hurricanes could be tricked into dispersing, earthquakes could be disarmed by nuclear explosions and floodwaters held at bay by great mounds of dirt.
Such conceits are another victim of a year of destruction.
The planet’s controlling forces romp over dreams like those. Usually the best that can be done is to see the danger coming long enough to run.
Rich and poor nations have taken the hit over a period so twisted in nature’s assaults that one month, rich is helping poor and the next, poor is helping rich as best it can, and then the poor gets slammed once again.
The United States, giver of tsunami aid in December, accepted hurricane aid from some of those same countries in September. Now it is giving to South Asia a second time, in response to the weekend earthquakes. India is sending tents, food, blankets and medicine to its foe, Pakistan, geology briefly shoving aside geopolitics.
More than 176,000 people died in the earthquake and tsunami of December; an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 in the quake Saturday; perhaps 1,000 or more in Guatemalan landslides last week; more than 1,200 in Katrina. Asian beaches, mountainous Kashmir villages and American urban streets and casinos all were overwhelmed.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
After World War II, nothing seemed too far-fetched for science, not once the atom was split and, again, not once men stepped on the moon.
In one of the most enduring efforts, still alive but hardly about to happen, man thought he could seed clouds, make it rain reliably and put a stop to devastating drought.
The effort continues, especially in China; there, rockets, anti-aircraft guns and aircraft regularly pelt the sky with chemicals. The results so far: China has lots of experience, but limited success, in making the rains come.
If humans are inexorably warming the globe, they’ve proved unable to fine-tune the megaforces to their benefit.
They can cause earthquakes, little ones, by injecting fluids into deep wells, filling huge reservoirs with water or setting off nuclear explosions, but they can’t prevent any, says the U.S. Geological Survey. Any notion of “lubricating” tectonic plates to relieve destructive tension would only make things worse, if it made any difference.
washingtonpost.com
Such a diasastrous disconnect, the price of assuming ‘dominion over nature.’
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. – Former Education Secretary William Bennett on Saturday blamed the news media for distorting his remarks about aborting black babies, saying he had intended to make “a bad argument in order to put it down.”
Bennett, making his first public speech since the comment aired on his radio show last month, said the meaning of his remark linking the crime rate with black abortions was reversed in many news reports.
“I was putting forward a bad argument in order to put it down,” Bennett said, drawing sustained applause from nearly 4,500 people attending the Bakersfield Business Conference. “They reported and emphasized only the abhorrent argument, not my shooting it down.”
news.yahoo.com
Arrogant fool.