Anatolian Edits
51 minutes ago
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Down Highway 60 - Off the Grid in the South Hebron Hills
Bedouin villages in the South Hebron Hills are poised to skip the industrial age and take a leap from primitive to sustainable. They will never have to worry about reducing their carbon footprint– unlike those of us from affluent societies in the US or Israel. Renewable energy systems– wind turbines and solar panels are being built for the poorest and most marginalized communities in the occupied West Bank. This help is a matter of life-support. Environmental studies reveal their cisterns are toxic and they have been denied access to the electricity grid servicing nearby settlements. The project is a joint initiative of Israelis and Palestinian community workers who believe borders of fear and racism are best overcome by neighbors working together.
I am traveling on Highway 60 with Ilan, cofounder of Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers who insist on telling their fellow citizens the price of occupation. Historically this road connected seven major cities: Nablus/Shchem, Genin, Tul-Karem, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Hebron/Halil and Be'ersheva. In 95-6 during the Oslo agreements, the road was shifted to lead 'around' the Bethlehem area. The tunnels near Beit Jallah were dug, establishing the first "Israeli only roads", marking the beginning of "separate roads." Check Points were set up, not quite on the Green Line, shaving land away from Palestinians (as usual). Internationals are supposed to go through Bethlehem near Rachel's Tomb Checkpoint, turning the Beit Jallah "tunnels" into a de-facto apartheid checkpoint. To pass through, one must have either a Blue ID- Israeli citizenship, or 'the Right of Return'. Neither of which I have, but Ilan does not seem worried. West Bank Palestinians are not aloud into Jerusalem without permits and green license plates are not aloud within Israeli '67 lines. They are however allowed on Highway 60 if it is within the Occupied Territory. Jerusalem is effectively off from the the road as is historical continuity, the traditional economy and of course the people.
Ilan is excited to share projects he has been working on in the southern villages. I have brought children’s books for the library in Susya, a village with a bullet proof school bus to protect their children from angry settlers. We are driving on a super fast road that tunnels through the earth, cutting travel time and making it easy to ignore the fact that we are passing beneath Palestinian towns and villages. In a color coded world– white water tanks on Jewish rooftops denote solar, black water tanks on Palestinian rooftops, mergency reserves. Green license plates are for Palestinian cars and yellow for Israeli but the only license plates on Highway 60 are yellow. This road, built on Palestinian land, is exclusively for settlers and Israelis...
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Iris Keltz @'Counterpunch'
Have to say that the most startling aspects of these last two posts from Counterpunch are: 1. Uri Avnery's "proof in the pudding" that Israel's claims to being a democratic state are a farcical misrepresentation of the facts, and that the Knesset's style of government is transforming into rule by fascism, its ostracism of non-Jewish citizens worthy of the Nazi's at their most fanatical. 2. Iris Keltz's comments about car licence plates in Israel, yellow for the Jewish people's cars and green for the Palestinian people's cars, it may not be apartheid for the people(?), but it is certainly apartheid for the cars, judging the cars by the religious persuasion of their owners. One has to ask what would they(the Israeli government) like to ask for next, perhaps the addition of a badge in the shape of a green crescent moon to be worn by all Palestinian residents of Israel, or maybe not.
The walls came down on the dehumanising policies of apartheid in South Africa, through a concerted global effort and the struggles of those denied their humanity by the South African government. The walls came down on the Nazi government of Germany, through the actions of a global effort that spoke for humanity, which refused the apartheid policies dehumanizing the Jewish people of Europe, and the evils that such intolerance created. The walls must come down in Israel, on a government whose policies deny human rights to 20% of the population of Israel by circumstance of their birth, that they were not born Jewish. The walls must come down on the Israeli government that will not recognise a Palestinian state, because of their religion, and because the Israeli government schemes to steal more and more of the Palestinian people's land. The blockade of Gaza and the economic ruin of Palestinian lands, the physical, daily torture of children, their parents and grandparents are indistinguishable from the worst excesses of an apartheid system, and are an unconscionable blight on global humanity. It is time for the world to step forward once again, and denounce Israel for its apartheid inhumanity, BOYCOTT ISRAEL NOW.
A Parliamentary Mob - Inside the Israeli Knesset
WHEN I was first elected to the Knesset, I was appalled at what I found. I discovered that, with rare exceptions, the intellectual level of the debates was close to zero. They consisted mainly of strings of clichés of the most commonplace variety. During most of the debates, the plenum was almost empty. Most participants spoke vulgar Hebrew. When voting, many members had no idea what they were voting for or against, they just followed the party whip.
That was 1967, when the Knesset included members like Levy Eshkol and Pinchas Sapir, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin and Yohanan Bader, Meir Yaari and Yaakov Chazan, for whom today's streets, highroads and neighborhoods are named.
In comparison to the present Knesset, that Knesset now looks like Plato’s Academy.
* * *
WHAT FRIGHTENED me more than anything else was the readiness of members to enact irresponsible laws for the sake of fleeting popularity, especially at times of mass hysteria. One of my first Knesset initiatives was to submit a bill which would have created a second chamber, a kind of Senate, composed of outstanding personalities, with the power to hold up the enactment of new laws and compel the Knesset to reconsider them after an interval. This, I hoped, would prevent laws being hastily adopted in an atmosphere of excitement.
The bill was not considered seriously, neither by the Knesset nor by the general public. The Knesset almost unanimously voted it down. (After some years, several of the members told me that they regretted their vote.) The newspapers nicknamed the proposed chamber “the House of Lords” and ridiculed it. Haaretz devoted a whole page of cartoons to the proposal, depicting me in the garb of a British peer.
So there is no brake. The production of irresponsible laws, most of them racist and anti-democratic, is booming. The more the government itself is turning into an assembly of political hacks, the more the likelihood of its preventing such legislation is diminishing. The present government, the largest, basest and most despised in Israel’s history, is cooperating with the Knesset members who submit such bills, and even initiating them itself.
The only remaining obstacle to this recklessness is the Supreme Court. In the absence of a written constitution, it has taken upon itself the power to annul scandalous laws that violate democracy and human rights. But the Supreme Court itself is beleaguered by rightists who want to destroy it, and is moving with great caution. It intervenes only in the most extreme cases.
Thus a paradoxical situation has arisen: parliament, the highest expression of democracy, is itself now posing a dire threat to Israeli democracy.
* * *
THE MAN who personifies this phenomenon more than anyone else is MK Michael Ben-Ari of the “National Union” faction, the heir of Meir Kahane, whose organization “Kach” (“Thus”) was outlawed many years ago because of its openly fascist character.
Kahane himself was elected to the Knesset only once. The reaction of the other members was unequivocal: whenever he rose to speak, almost all the other members left the hall. The rabbi had to make his speeches before a handful of ultra-right colleagues.
A few weeks ago I visited the present Knesset for the first time since its election. I went there to listen to a debate about a subject that concerns me too: the decision of the Palestinian Authority to boycott the products of the settlements, a dozen years after Gush Shalom started this boycott. I spent some hours in the building, and from hour to hour my revulsion deepened.
The main cause was a circumstance I had not been aware of: MK Ben-Ari, the disciple and admirer of Kahane, holds sway there. Not only is he not an isolated outsider on the fringe of parliamentary life, as his mentor had been, but on the contrary, he is at the center. I saw the members of almost all other factions crowding around him in the members’ cafeteria and listening to his perorations with rapt attention in the plenum. No doubt can remain that Kahanism – the Israeli version of fascism – has moved from the margin to center stage...
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Uri Avnery @'Counterpunch'
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
tonyhawk / Can't carry my extra skateboard on the plane, so I left it in here. Barcelona airport, EasyJet terminal. Finders keepers http://post.ly/nwCr
Monday, 19 July 2010
For fug's sake...
Lord Undertone???
Reward for his music industry efforts - well it's not for his solo crap is it...Guy Fawkes where are you when we really need you?
Hmmm!
Apple CEO Steve Jobs came up with a two-part solution. Part 1: There is no problem. Part 2: Even though there is no problem, we’re going to give everyone a free case, which should insulate the antenna and prevent the interference that we just told you isn’t actually occurring. But if you’re still not happy, you can give back the phone for a full refund. Jobs’s snotty tone made it clear that he was pretty fed up with all the whining about a problem that he says doesn’t exist.
This is classic Apple behavior. No matter what the whole world can see with its own eyes, just keep saying that it isn’t true, and maybe, eventually, everyone will believe you. By refusing to acknowledge the problem, Jobs just reinforced the image of Apple as a company that is in deep denial and unable to admit a mistake—a company that has for so long been able to bend reality to suit its needs that it now has lost touch with reality itself.
Daniel Lyons@ 'Newsweek'
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