Usually September 11th, or 1st of Meskerem on the Ethiopian calendar, is a day of celebration. It is the Ethiopian new-year. However, this year there was a distinct shortage of happy gatherings or collective jubilation to mark the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, either inside the country or amongst the diaspora.
Imagine Moscow being taken over by some international corporate cartel. By a monster which has its own factories and office buildings, security services, private prisons, re-education (‘training’) centers, and its obedient mass media outlets. Imagine that it also has detailed databases on almost everyone who really matters in the capital.
Imagine that human lives suddenly don’t matter. People are only expected to produce and consume; they become fully disposable.
“We, poets from around the world, are appalled that the Saudi Arabian authorities have sentenced Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh to death for apostasy. It is not a crime to hold an idea, however unpopular, nor is it a crime to express opinion peacefully. Every individual has the freedom to believe or not believe. Freedom of conscience is an essential human freedom.” PEN International letter signed by a group of poets in an expression of solidarity with Ashraf Fayadh.
Wearing a T-shirt, chanting songs at a demonstration or donating clothing could be enough for Israel’s large Palestinian minority to fall foul of a newly passed anti-terrorism law, civil rights groups have warned.
The legislation, applied in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, has been condemned as a “dangerous” threat to civil liberties. It dramatically broadens the range of offences to include sympathising with, encouraging and failing to prevent terrorism.
Universities have become bastions of managerial madness. The trends began some time ago, when money became the ultimate pursuit, and Mr Dollar became chancellor and chief. The obsession with obtaining grants, the panjandrums awarding grants, the siphoning off funds, underwriting projects, have all made the academy a sad state. Since universities now obsess about having a “marketing unit”, the idea of making education a matter of commercial viability rather than educational worth has become all important.
The group SSUK (sŭk), has registered its strong objection to, and condemnation of, the participation of Dr. Tim Anderson in the Crossing Borders Conference on Refugees, to convene July 7-10 on the Greek Island of Lesbos. Dr. Anderson is the author of The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance.
In a highly-regarded public speaking competition 15 year-old Leanne Mohamad, a pupil at Wanstead High School in London, stood up and gave an impassioned speech about the appalling situation back home in the Holy Land. It was so moving that she won the regional final and a video of her speech was posted on the organisers’ website.
The British Labour party, it is becoming clear, is now indulging in all-out McCarthyism against the most outspoken critics of Israel in its ranks. And almost no one seems to have the guts to call out this dangerous farce.
On April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks published classified military footage of a July 2007 attack by a US Army helicopter gunship in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. The video titled Collateral Murder depicted the killing of more than a dozen men, including two Reuters staffers. At the time of release, the WikiLeaks website temporarily crashed with a massive influx of visitors, while versions popped up on YouTube, reaching millions.
In her oily, cringe-inducing and totally predictable speech to AIPAC on March 21, Hillary Clinton argued that, since (according to her) “anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world… we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.” In other words, we must do what we can to shut down any legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. A reliable means of doing so is to conflate said criticism with anti-Semitism and thus vilify the critic in question.
