Sim-O

Ha’aretz:

There is no Israeli whose presence in the West Bank is neutral. Civilian or armed, soldier or woman settler, resident of a quality-of-life settlement or a nearby outpost, MahsomWatch activist or guest at a settlement, Bezek worker or client at a Palestinian garage. All of them, all of us, are in this Palestinian territory, in the West Bank, because our state occupied it in 1967.

The presence of every Israeli in the West Bank is based on a regime of privilege that developed out of that primary act of occupation. We have the privilege of hiking in Palestinian areas to our heart’s content, of buying subsidized housing for Jews only on the lands of Bethlehem, of raising cherries and grapes in the wadis of Hebron, of quarrying on the mountain slopes, of driving on roads whose land was expropriated from the indigenous inhabitants for public use.

The Palestinians, in contrast to us, not only are not allowed to move from Hebron to Tel Aviv, because they like the sea, for example; they are not even allowed to visit the lands and homes their family owned before 1948, nor are they allowed to tour Galilee and visit relatives. The regime of travel permits that has been in place since 1991 deprives all Palestinians of the right to freedom of movement in Israel while the system of roadblocks limits their movement in their own territories.
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The right to travel the land is a basic human right, and like any right, when it is not universal, it is a mutilated right, that is, it becomes a privilege. That is a fact, even if most Israelis repress or ignore it. Our presence in the Palestinian territories, which is based on military and political superiority, is therefore violent and arrogant by its very nature, even when it is expressed in pleasant ways, like cultivating gardens in settlements or taking a pre-Shabbat hike.

Read the rest

Labels: Israel, Palestine

Asia Times:

Sri Lanka’s long-dead ceasefire has been formally buried. The Lankan government announced its withdrawal from the 2002 ceasefire agreement on Wednesday, paving the way for a no-holds-barred fight between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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Over 5,000 people have died in the past two years of “ceasefire”, taking the death toll since the war erupted in 1983 to around 70,000. On the ground, the ceasefire had ceased to exist since end-2005. But it continued to hold on paper.
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Sources in the Lankan government told Asia Times Online that the government’s decision to call off the ceasefire at this juncture was prompted by the series of victories that the Lankan military has scored against the LTTE in recent months. “Emboldened by these military successes, the government has decided to push for a fight to the finish,” a Defense Ministry official said. “Military defeat of the LTTE seems within reach and the government would like to go for it,” he said.
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“The military seems to believe its own propaganda,” said a Tamil political analyst who did not want to be named. “The LTTE will slip into guerrilla warfare and bleed the government, as it has done in the past.”

Labels: Sri Lanka

Mark Steel:

As with most of his decisions, it’s doubtful whether this conversion is due to a seriously held conviction. For example, if he’s a devoted Catholic, why did he and Cherie undergo a rebirthing in Mexico in 2001, described in The Times thus: “Mr Blair and his wife, wearing bathing costumes, were led to the Temazcal, a brick-coloured pyramid… They were told the Temazcal was like the womb and those participating in the ritual must confront their hopes and fears before venturing outside… The Blairs were offered watermelon and papaya, thentold to smear what they did not eat over each other’s bodiesalong with mud from the Mayan jungle.”

So at that point Blair seems to have looked at Catholicism, with its insistence that we’re all born with stained souls due to Eve being persuaded to eat an apple by a talking snake, and its belief that through a weekly offering you’re accepting the blood and body of Jesus, and he’s said: “The problem with this religion is it’s not mad enough for me.”

Labels: Blair

The Guardian:

Barack Obama swept away any sense of inevitability about Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House last night, scoring an upset victory in the Iowa caucuses that dramatically alters the Democratic race.

It’s only the first result, so it could all change. But it’s still a good start.

Labels: Politix, USA

W00t!!!1!!

Got trackbacks again, not just those crapy blogger (back?)links

Labels: Blogging

W00t!!!1!!

Got trackbacks again, not just those crapy blogger (back?)links

Labels: Blogging

Nothing like upholding standards. If you start letting standards slide, god knows where we’ll end up.

Iain makes a point, a valid one, about Nadine Dorries sounding off about Catherine Tates’ Christmas special and it being inapropriate for a family audience, even though it was shown at 10:30 and was nothing unexpected from Catherine (so I’m told, I don’t actually think Catherine is funny, so didn’t watch).

But I think that Nadine should also keep to certain standards herself, like apologising for or retracting/correcting false accusations.
After all, if politicians can’t keep certain standards what hope has the rest of us?

As a matter of fact, I had forgotten. Thanx Justin.

Labels: Demostrations, Freedom of Speech, Government, Law/Legal, Politix

Jonathon Cook, Electronic Intifada:

After seven years of rumors and self-serving memoirs, the Israeli media has finally published extracts from an official source about the Camp David negotiations in summer 2000. For the first time it is possible to gauge with some certainty the extent of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “generous offer” to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat’s reasons for rejecting it.

In addition, the document provides valuable insights into what larger goals Israel hoped to achieve at Camp David and how similar ambitions are driving its policies to this day.
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The [Camp David] negotiations, in July 2000, were Barak’s attempt to wrap up all the outstanding points of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that had not been addressed during a series of Israeli withdrawals from the occupied territories specified in the Oslo agreements.
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Perhaps not surprisingly, the Israeli document does not acknowledge the most generous offer of all during the six decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the PLO’s decision in the late 1980s to renounce its claim to most of the Palestinian homeland, and settle instead for a state in the two separate territories of the West Bank and Gaza — on only 22 percent of historic Palestine.

So given the massive territorial concession made by the Palestinian leadership 20 years ago, how do Barak’s terms compare? The document tells us that Barak insisted on three main principles in agreeing to end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state…

Read the rest, it is very interesting.

Labels: Israel, Palestine

I’m not feeling the lurve from my MP,
Was it something I said?

Labels: Iraq