• « Contrairement à Malala, Nabila n’a pas reçu un accueil chaleureux à Washington » - Al Jazeera English (archive)

    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/malala-nabila-worlds-apart-201311193857549913.html

    It is useful to contrast the American response to Nabila Rehman with that of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who was nearly assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban. While Malala was feted by Western media figures, politicians and civic leaders for her heroism, Nabila has become simply another one of the millions of nameless, faceless people who have had their lives destroyed over the past decade of American wars. The reason for this glaring discrepancy is obvious. Since Malala was a victim of the Taliban, she, despite her protestations, was seen as a potential tool of political propaganda to be utilised by war advocates. She could be used as the human face of their effort, a symbol of the purported decency of their cause, the type of little girl on behalf of whom the United States and its allies can say they have been unleashing such incredible bloodshed. Tellingly, many of those who took up her name and image as a symbol of the justness of American military action in the Muslim world did not even care enough to listen to her own words or feelings about the subject.

    As described by the Washington Post’s Max Fisher :

    Western fawning over Malala has become less about her efforts to improve conditions for girls in Pakistan, or certainly about the struggles of millions of girls in Pakistan, and more about our own desire to make ourselves feel warm and fuzzy with a celebrity and an easy message. It’s a way of letting ourselves off the hook, convincing ourselves that it’s simple matter of good guys vs bad guys, that we’re on the right side and that everything is okay.

    • Again The Peace Prize Not For Peace
      http://www.countercurrents.org/swanson101014.htm

      Malala Yousafzay became a celebrity in Western media because she was a victim of designated enemies of Western empire. Had she been a victim of the governments of Saudi Arabia or Israel or any other kingdom or dictatorship being used by Western governments, we would not have heard so much about her suffering and her noble work. Were she primarily an advocate for the children being traumatized by drone strikes in Yemen or Pakistan, she’d be virtually unknown to U.S. television audiences.

      But Malala recounted her meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama a year ago and said, “I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education, it will make a big impact.” So, she actually advocated pursuing education rather than war, and yet the Nobel Committee had not a word to say about that in announcing its selection, focusing on eliminating child labor rather than on eliminating war. The possibility exists then that either of this year’s recipients might give an antiwar acceptance speech. There has, after all, only been one pro-war acceptance speech, and that was from President Obama. But many speeches have been unrelated to abolishing war.

      Fredrik S. Heffermehl, who has led efforts to compel the Nobel Committee to give the peace prize for peace, said on Friday, "Malala Yousafzay is a courageous, bright and impressive person. Education for girls is important and child labor a horrible problem. Worthy causes, but the committee once again makes a false pretense of loyalty to Nobel and confuses and conceals the plan for world peace that Nobel intended to support.

      “If they had wished to be loyal to Nobel they would have stressed that Malala often has spoken out against weapons and military with a fine understanding of how ordinary people suffer from militarism. Young people see this more clearly than the grown ups.”

  • Fun with chronology: misreporting the Israeli assault on Gaza -
    Belen Fernandez
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/fun-with-chronology-misreporting-israeli-assault-gaza-201312276433126920.

    The New York Times’ rendering of recent violence on the border between Gaza and Israel is a shining example of the chronological sleights of hand that have come to characterise mainstream reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

  • Que sont les révolutions arabes devenues ?, par Alain Gresh
    Les blogs du Diplo, 23 décembre 2013 @alaingresh
    http://blog.mondediplo.net/2013-12-22-Que-sont-les-revolutions-arabes-devenues

    Il y a trois ans, à la surprise générale, aussi bien de la part des intellectuels arabes enfermés dans leurs tours d’ivoire que des experts occidentaux qui pontifiaient sur la passivité des masses arabes ainsi que sur leur peu d’aspiration au changement et à la démocratie, le peuple égyptien, à la suite du peuple tunisien, descendait dans la rue et mettait à bas en quinze jours une dictature qui paraissait inébranlable. Le caractère pacifique des changements intervenus, certes avec des martyrs mais sans massacres à grande échelle, a étonné le monde.

    #Egypte #Proche-Orient #Syrie #Tunisie #Monde_arabe #Mouvement_de_contestation #Mutation

    Ce texte a été publié en anglais : « Three years later : Was it a revolution ? »
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/three-years-later-was-it-revolution-20131219115550312396.html

  • Did Arab uprisings deepen the Sunni-Shia divide? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/did-arab-uprisings-deepen-sunni-shia-divide-20131217293301149.html

    If sectarian identities alone are enough to create conflict and instigate violence, why hasn’t this happened ever since those identities were forged and why did it intensify at certain times and not others in the history of the Sunni-Shia relations? If violence necessarily follows sectarianism, why has Sunni-Shia violence been more intense in countries like Pakistan and Iraq and almost non-existent in countries like Kuwait or Turkey?

  • ’No clear evidence’ for rise in Iraqi birth defects
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/09/2013915141726303111.html

    A more informative way to present this data would have been by district, and by exposure, before and after 2003. In other words, tables could have been constructed for individual districts indicating which districts had high exposure and which ones had low exposure to bombardment or heavy fighting. This presentation would be more likely to show changes over time in individual districts, based on the exposure status of the population. Indeed, some may argue that in a study such as this, even “district” may be too large a unit of analysis to render real effects visible.

    Based on numerous limitations and uncertainties, some of which are indicated in the report itself, the conclusions of this report are overstated. According to the data provided by its unknown authors, they cannot legitimately make any conclusion regarding rates of birth defects in the governorates of Iraq. This amounts to an immense failure of this report in accomplishing what it set out to do: to detect changes in adverse reproductive outcomes before and after exposure to bombardment or heavy fighting in Iraqi population.

  • It was all part of the plan - Yousef Munayyer
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/08/2013814124635977169.html

    What has changed dramatically is the reality on the ground, represented by both the number of settlers and settlements. Another change, clearly traced below, has been in the position of the United States toward the settlement issue.

    In the early 1990s, Secretary of State James Baker led the Bush Administration’s charge and was “negotiating with Arab countries on the wording of a new United Nations Security Council resolution that would criticise Israeli settlements in occupied Arab territories as a breach of international law.”

    Baker took an almost unrecognisably strong position with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in comparison with Secretary Kerry today. At the time, Baker’s position was that “all growth in new and existing settlements in the occupied territories must halt before the United States would consider guaranteeing $400m in desperately needed loans for new Soviet immigrant housing.”

    That was the last time a US Secretary of State actually conditioned US aid on Israel changing its colonial behavior.

  • Six rules of thumb for writing on Sunni/ Shiite concepts - Alarabiya.net English | Front Page
    http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2013/05/31/Six-rules-of-thumb-for-writing-on-Sunni-Shiite-concepts-.html

    Sur Al-Arabiya...

    Fourth: when you hear people in Muslim communities or in the Middle East speaking in Sunni-Shiite terms, or analyzing events with reference to an age old civil war, or fearing a Shiite alliance from Iran through Iraq to Syria then Lebanon, or calling for a Sunni stance; when you hear that do not take that as statements about the actual facts out there rather ask yourself why do people insist on looking at events in such an archaic way? It is well known that all peoples place their political conflicts within a bigger narrative; and the question should be: Why do many Muslims insist on this narrative? When did it start to become a widely used one? How did the Islamic Revolution of Iran influence that? Most importantly what other narratives exist out there? We hear all the time of people saying its not a Sunni-Shiite thing… but for some reason those calls are not taken to be narratives about what is going on. Many observers prefer to consider them attempts to make things different.

    The myth of the 1,400 year Sunni-Shia war - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/07/2013719220768151.html

    As described by the Saudi writer Abdullah Hamiddadin, this explanation of contemporary events is as absurd as explaining modern tensions between Turkey and the EU as being rooted in the ancient conflict between King Charles and the Empress of Byzantium. Positing that present-day political rivalries can be explained by examining ninth-century conflicts between European powers is transparent nonsense. However, the same logic is readily applied to conflicts within the Muslim world.

  • What’s delaying the WHO report on Iraqi birth defects?
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/201365101540408281.html

    Iraq is poisoned. Thirty-five million Iraqis wake up every morning to a living nightmare of childhood cancers, adult cancers and birth defects. Familial cancers, cluster cancers and multiple cancers in the same individual have become frequent in Iraq. 

    Sterility, repeated miscarriages, stillbirths and severe birth defects - some never described in any medical books - are all around, in increasing numbers. Trapped in this hellish nightmare, millions of Iraqis struggle to survive, and they call for help.

  • Are we all Muslim now? Assata Shakur and the Terrordome
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/20135712155495678.html

    Organised confusion

    By all credible accounts, Assata is not guilty of killing Officer Forester in 1973. But the focus by many on her innocence as the reason why she is not a “terrorist” misses the point completely. Because whether she’s innocent or not, the labelling of her as a “terrorist” has more to do with her political beliefs and the liberation struggles that she was a part of. In fact, it’s those very beliefs and activities that led to her (and others) being targeted under the FBI’s COINTELPRO, persecuted, put on trial, convicted and then forced to ultimately flee the country and live in exile in Cuba. For the US state, when it comes to labelling a “terrorist”, innocence or guilt are simply irrelevant details.

    For her supporters and those on the Left who deny that she’s a “terrorist”, we have to understand that to the US government that’s exactly what she is. But instead of denying it, it’s high time that we instead challenge the prevailing logic of “terrorism”, refuse to normalise it, and recognise it for what it is: not only a political label used to discredit and undermine struggles for self-determination, but also a legal frame that then gives the state the sanction and power to narrow the scope of dissent and violently crackdown and arrest, incarcerate, torture, bomb, drone, invade, and even assassinate those deemed threats to state interests.

  • The system in place - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/20134792038694371.html

    The arrest of acclaimed musician, Oday Khatib , sheds light on Israel’s draconian system of arrest and detention.

    (...)

    With thousands of other Palestinians behind bars, Oday’s case is therefore no more or less unfair than thousands of others; it simply sheds new light on the system.

    Oday’s family has expressed hope that several of the soldiers who chased the youth on March 19 will be willing to testify that Oday was not among the stone-throwers. Not likely: the conviction rate for such alleged offences in military trials, in 2010, was 99.74 percent.

    On Monday, Oday is scheduled to walk into the courtroom of an occupying military power and hear the charges against him. His old teacher - one of dozens who have been lighting up social media sites in the wake of Oday’s arrest - hopes he will sing.

    “I imagine the only way he is surviving prison is by singing,” writes Julia Katarina, the British mezzo-soprano who put her opera career on hold for three years to teach voice lessons at Al Kamandjati. “I hope he sings in the military court,” Julia writes, because if Oday’s accusers can find “an ounce of humanity in their hearts, they will release him.”

    Sandy Tolan

  •  - Un célèbre chanteur palestinien arrêté risque une lourde peine de prison, sur des accusations très douteuses
    http://www.info-palestine.eu/spip.php?article13401

    Oday al-Khatib, 22 ans, qui est né et a grandi dans le camp de réfugiés d’Al Fawwar près d’Hébron, a été arrêté le 19 mars par des soldats israéliens qui pourchassaient de jeunes lanceurs de pierres à proximité. Il est un chanteur vedette d’Al Kamandjati, cette célèbre école de musique basée à Ramallah et fondée en 2005 par Ramzi Aburedwan. Oday a enregistré et fait des tournées avec différents groupes musicaux arabes en France, en Belgique, au Liban, en Norvège, en Italie, en Palestine, à Dubaï, en Algérie et en Autriche. (Ramzi et Al Kamandjati sont l’objet principal de mon nouveau livre, et l’histoire d’Oday y figurera en bonne place).

    Les circonstances apparentes de l’arrestation d’Oday mettent en doute les accusations. Oday, selon des entretiens avec ses parents, attendait un ami sur une colline à Al Fawwar et ne faisait pas partie du groupe de jeunes lanceurs de pierres. Jihad Khatibn, le père d’Oday, a déclaré au représentant local du groupe israélien des droits de l’homme, B’Tselem : « Alors qu’Oday était en train d’attendre, un groupe de gosses s’est mis à lancer des pierres sur quelques soldats qui se trouvaient dans le coin. Et quand les soldats ont fait la chasse aux enfants, il ne lui est pas venu à l’esprit que les soldats pouvaient s’en prendre à lui. Autrement, il serait parti sans attendre ». La mère d’Oday, lors d’un entretien avec Céline Dagher d’Al Kamandjati, et son père Jihad en parlant avec mon collègue Anan Abu-Shanab, ont souligné qu’Oday ne pensait pas qu’il serait la cible des soldats. Anan a entendu Jihad dire : « Oday n’a pas couru quand il a vu les gamins foncer vers les lui », « et puis les soldats sont arrivés et l’ont arrêté ». La famille maintient qu’Oday attendait son ami sur la colline, avec qui il avait prévu de dîner, et que la lecture du téléphone portable d’Oday pourrait prouver qu’il a appelé son ami juste avant de quitter son domicile.

    ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
    Il chante Darwich dans cette vidéo :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-JLzs3qjMc&feature=player_embedded#

     !

    Retour sur l’Hommage à Mahmoud Darwich.
    http://www.alkamandjati.com/actualites/64-retour-sur-l-hommage-a-mahmoud-darwich.html

    Avec Ramzi Aburedwan et les musiciens de Dal’Ouna, le jeune chanteur palestinien Oday Khatib, des musiciens angevins, l’intervention de Kwal pour le Slam ...

  • « Leaning in » in Iraq : Women’s rights and war ? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013323141149557391.html

    Sur le « féminisme » qui consiste à réclamer une place au sommet d’un système d’oppression et d’exploitation.

    It is problematic and troubling that Sandberg readily claims to be a feminist, without qualifying that her kind of feminism is corporatist and way too exclusionary. Her notion of “true equality” requires more women to be at the top - in leadership positions in government and the corporate structure. She supposedly believes that these women can change the world for the rest of women, and men. But, so far, they have not done so in meaningful ways. Shall I remind us of Madeleine Albright’s famous statement when asked about US sanctions against Iraq that endangered the lives of 100 of thousands children? She said: "We think the price is worth it."

    So what is a girl or woman to think? Hillary finishes up her stint as Secretary of State and is lauded as one of the best, ever. She is acclaimed for her “women’s rights” foreign policy agenda and the gratitude of women worldwide. Little is said about the imperial stance of her framing, or the gender violence that US policy has triggered and continues for women across the globe under her watch. Women in Iraq, and Afghanistan and Egypt are standing up, what Sandberg might term leaning in, but against patriarchal practices that US policy is implicated in.

    • Women in leadership posts just mean that women will be in place to lead this structural exploitative imperial nightmare. We do not need more women in the power slots that already exist. We need a different non-hierarchical formulation of power - one that is not rooted in gender violence across the globe, and then feminists of whatever sex and race can occupy places of leadership.

      Imperial feminism does not work for most women in the US or abroad, so it makes little sense to endorse it. Feminism promised to the many by the few does not work. Trickle-down feminism does not work.

  • Influential Ex-Aide to Obama Voices Concern on Drone Strikes - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/us/influential-ex-aide-to-obama-voices-concern-on-drone-strikes.html?_r=0

    Sur le tintamarre fait autour du transfert du programme drones de la CIA vers le Pentagone : Pure opération de relations publiques qui, au minimum, ne changera pas grand chose en termes de victimes civiles et donc de transparence.

    Some close observers of the drone program disputed the widely repeated notion that moving it entirely to the Defense Department would necessarily make it more open, particularly if it is to be operated by the Joint Special Operations Command, among the least transparent elements of the military.

    “We know JSOC is far more secretive than the C.I.A., and that Congressional oversight is weaker,” said Naureen Shah, associate director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School. She said that while units under the Joint Special Operations Command were accused of serious abuse of prisoners in Iraq, “it never had to face public scrutiny about it in the way the C.I.A. did.”

    #drones #FDG

    • The tip of the spear : US Special Operations Forces- http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332811912362162.html

      Le JSOC est aussi la pierre angulaire de la stratégie du "entraînons les sauvages à combattre à notre place et se zigouiller entre eux pour préserver notre « intérêt national »", strategie qui ne peut qu’assurer le délitement du tissu social dans les pays concernés.

      The rise of US Special Operations Forces engaging in kinetic operations and direct action or in using their extensive military, psychological operations and war-fighting skills to train proxy forces in all the places where the US projects its power is alarming.

      The ascendance of an elite clique of ultra-warriors protected by the cloak of secrecy and pushing off responsibility for acts of violence to their proxies and allies, means that the tip of the imperial spear can tear through the social fabric of many a country without associated costs in blood and treasure and hidden from the view of the press and the public.

      And because such special operations do not require the sacrifices of an expansive force, the special operators can largely act without public outrage or demand for accountability. The old/new military philosophy of a light footprint is useful precisely because it allows for the war in the shadows to continue unabated and with impunity.

  • Sur Israël et la notion de boycott, par Joseph Massad. Attention, c’est assez terrifiant… Israel and the politics of boycott
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201331884943284526.html

    As a racially separatist Jewish economy and colony established on the lands of the Palestinians continued to be the primary goal of Zionism, the principle of boycott of Palestinian labour and products would become more aggressive as time passed. Like its parent Zionist movement before it, which used the tactic of boycott to effect racial separation and discrimination rather than end it, the Zionist labour Federation, the Histadrut, would begin in 1927 to use the time-honoured act of picketing. Picketing is traditionally used by workers and unions to end practices involving the exploitation and unfair treatment of workers. In the case of the Jewish colonists, they used picketing to bring about discrimination against Palestinian workers and to deny them employment in their own country. The Zionist picketing campaign sought to boycott Jewish businesses which continued to employ Palestinian labour as well as the goods the Palestinians produced. This was not only confined to the agricultural Jewish colonies in the Palestinian countryside, but also included urban settings where Jewish businesses employed Palestinians in the area of construction.

  • What a ’period of calm’ looks like in the Occupied Territories (Infographie)

    Three months have passed since the ceasefire that brought an end to Israel’s eight-day attack on the Gaza Strip known as Operation “Pillar of Defence”. This infographic depicts the number of attacks on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military during this three-month period, as well as the number of Palestinian attacks emanating from Gaza. Since late November, Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have averaged over one a day, everyday. These include shootings by troops positioned along the border fence, attacks on fishermen working off the Gaza coast, and incursions by the Israeli army.

    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013220152044327694.html

    On va sans doute plus entendre parler de la roquette lancée aujourd’hui depuis Gaza que des attaques israéliennes qui ont débuté dès le lendemain du cessez-le-feu et étaient quasi-quotidiennes. http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2013/02/26/une-roquette-tiree-de-gaza-s-ecrase-sur-le-sur-d-israel_1838786_3218.html

  • Gaza, un territoire toujours occupé

    http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_access_and_closure_map_december_2012_geopdf_mobile.pdf

    L’argument revient régulièrement, Israël a évacué Gaza en 2005. Et, pour récompense, ce territoire est devenu le havre du terrorisme (tirs de missiles).

    Cette carte démontre, à qui en doute, que Gaza reste occupé par l’armée israélienne. Simplement, au lieu d’être à l’intérieur de la prison, les geôliers la contrôlent de l’extérieur.

  • Empty words won’t fill hungry stomachs - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/201312614571857504.html

    Empty words won’t fill hungry stomachs
    There is good reason to be sceptical about the new initiatives coming out of Davos targeting smallholder farmers.

    Last Modified: 26 Jan 2013 15:07

    With the launch of the “Enough Food for Everyone IF” campaign, global food security is once again high on the public agenda. The UK campaign hopes to mobilise massive public support leading up to the scheduled meeting of the G8 in Enniskillen in June this year, trying to replicate the considerable success of the Make Poverty History movement in 2005. One of the key pillars of the IF Campaign is land, and drawing attention to the plight of poor farmers who are being forced to relinquish their property in what has been described as a neo-colonial “land grab”.

    #faim #alimentation #agriculture