Adelaide is Australia’s festival city. Its arts festival is currently in swing. Polite debate, aesthetics and high-octane wine are putting the world to rights. With one exception. Adelaide is where Rupert Murdoch began his empire. The voracious trail starts here. No statue stands; his is a spectral presence, controlling the only daily newspaper, even the printing presses. Across Australia, he owns almost 70 per cent of the capital city press and the only national newspaper, and Sky Television, and much else. Welcome to the world’s first murdochracy.
What is a murdochracy? It is where the fealty and augmentation of Murdoch’s editors and managers are undisguised, an inspiration to his choir on seven continents, where even his competitors sing along and wise politicians heed the Murdochism: “What’ll it be? A headline a day or a bucket of shit a day?”
Institute for Public Accuracy
News Release 11 March 2010
Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said: “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem.” He also stated that the U.S. will hold Israel “accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks.”
JOSH RUEBNER
National advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Ruebner said today: “Official written U.S. policy, which is based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, deems Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land as ‘inconsistent with international law.’ The Obama administration should translate its promise into action to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing violations of international law and its defiance of repeated U.S. calls to freeze all colonization of Palestinian land. The most effective way to do so would be to end U.S. military aid to Israel, amounting to $3 billion this year alone; [that would be] a real step towards a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”
The U.S. Campaign recently launched a new website — AidToIsrael.org — that documents “how U.S. military aid to Israel is being misused to injure and kill Palestinian civilians and to commit human rights abuses and violations of international law through Israel’s illegal 42-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.” The website also documents “the budgetary trade-offs in terms of affordable housing, green jobs training, early reading education programs, and primary health care that could have been funded with this money instead.”
Jamal Juma, The Christian Science Monitor, 10 March 2010
Jamal Juma' was born in Jerusalem and has dedicated his life to the defense of Palestinian human rights. The main focus of his work is on empowering local communities to defend their human rights in the face of the Israeli occupation. - stopthewall.org
The Palestinian elected leadership is weak. And even with Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan this week, the renewed Middle East peace process appears to be little more than a charade.
Israel has taken this opportunity to crack down on Palestinians who advocate nonviolent protests against the Israeli West Bank segregation barrier and charged them based on questionable or false evidence.
I know: I was arrested for talking too much. All we Palestinians want is a life free from racial discrimination.
Israel’s Undermining of International Law
by Jeff Halper
The Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population, impoverished and the victim of occupation and besiegement these past 42 years. It was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR people, and politicians, led by (no less) a philosopher of ethics. It is an effort coordinated as well with other governments whose political and military leaders are looking for ways to pursue “asymmetrical warfare” against peoples resisting domination and the plundering of their resources and labor without the encumbrances of human rights and current international law. It is a campaign that is making progress and had better be taken seriously by us all.
By Tobias Buck in Jerusalem and Daniel Dombey in Washington
Published: March 9 2010 22:22 | Last updated: March 10 2010 02:38
Israel on Tuesday revealed plans to build a further 1,600 housing units in a Jewish settlement in occupied East Jerusalem, a move Washington was quick to condemn for its impact on US-backed peace talks. The Israeli decision coincided with a visit by Joe Biden, the US vice-president and the country’s most senior official to travel to Israel since Barack Obama took office last year. It also came a day after the Palestinian Authority dropped opposition to a new round of indirect peace talks with Israel – a promise that may be in doubt.
“The substance and timing of the announcement … is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now,” Mr Biden said in condemning Israel’s move. “We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them.”
If Biden & co. are substantively upset and not so obviously playing a part then they’d take measures to register that displeasure, such as finally rescinding the tax-exempt status of land-grabbing front groups like, “American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a nonprofit organization that sends millions of shekels worth of donations to Israel every year for clearly political purposes, such as buying Arab properties in East Jerusalem..” ["U.S. group invests tax-free millions in East Jerusalem land", Uri Blau, Haaretz, 17 August 2009]
IRmep research director Grant F. Smith briefed IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman on National Public Radio about the US Treasury Department’s failure to regulate American charities laundering funds into illegal West Bank settlements.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets far-right Pastor John Hagee in Jerusalem the day before Vice President Joseph Biden arrives to oversee indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu and Hagee speak in favor of an undivided Jerusalem and the settlement enterprise in the West Bank, repudiating US demands.
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 2 March 2010
During an appearance at Vassar College in early February, controversial New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was asked about the ongoing evictions of Palestinian families from homes in East Jerusalem which Israel occupied in 1967. Israeli courts have ruled that Jewish settlers could take over some Palestinian homes on the grounds that Jews held title to the properties before Israel was established in 1948.
Bronner was concerned, but not only about Palestinians being made homeless in Israel’s relentless drive to Judaize their city; he was also worried about properties in his West Jerusalem neighborhood, including the building he lives in, partially owned by The New York Times, that was the home of Palestinians made refugees in 1948. Facts about The New York Times’ acquisition of this property are revealed for the first time in this article.
In order to deliver these interconnected messages as effectively as possible, we are asking for large-scale participation in the trial itself as well as in the events surrounding it. We hope you will join us for all or some of the events listed below and help us to put the call out to others.
I have written a script for a short video — estimated 5 to 10 minutes long, to be shown on YouTube and elsewhere on the Internet, tentatively entitled “Be nice to America. Or we’ll bring democracy to your country.” We need a cartoonist to draw the images and a technical person to create the movement using Adobe flash or other software, and to add the narration. Could be one person for both functions. The persons should be in basic agreement with the political ideas expressed in the script, which is available for a confidential reading upon request. Halfway decent pay. Write to: bblum6@aol.com
Recent Comments