Egypt: stone thrower arrested; had 50 shekels

Egyptian stone thrower arrested; found to have 50 shekels

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 12:45 PM PST

Al Ahram reports that a stone thrower in Alexandria was arrested - and found to have 50 shekels in Israeli currency on him.

Michael Awad Hanna , 21, is a clothing salesman from the Giza governate, and was apprehended while throwing stones. He said that another protester gave the money to him.

The implication, of course, is that Israel is fomenting riots in Egypt.

To their credit, the commenters are mercilessly ripping apart the story, asking if the Mossad is so stupid as to pay in shekels, which are pretty worthless in Egypt, rather than euros or dollars.
 Elder of Ziyon

Gaza: Time's Karl Vick remains clueless

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 02:00 PM PST

How many times do we have to see people who pretend to be analysts prove themselves so incredibly, irredeemably wrong?

Here's Time magazine's Karl Vick:

[W]hat if Abbas is holding still, and Hamas is moving closer to Abbas? That's what's been happening, from nearly all appearances, for the last two or three years, and everything coming out of the Cairo meeting points in the same direction. The head of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, and Abbas spoke for two hours, Abbas in the big chair, Meshaal on the couch with two others. Afterwards both met the cameras smiling. "There are no differences between us now," Abbas said. Mashaal went with: "We have opened a new page of partnership." And on whose terms? Hamas stands for resistance, its formal name being the Islamic Resistance Movement. But in the Gaza Strip where it governs, Hamas has largely enforced a truce with Israel since January 2009. And in Cairo it signed a paper committing itself to "popular resistance" against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. That's "popular" in contrast to "violent" or "military" resistance. We're talking marches here. Chanting and signs, not booby traps or suicide bombs.

"Every people has the right to fight against occupation in every way, with weapons or otherwise. But at the moment, we want to cooperate with the popular resistance," Meshaal told AFP. "We believe in armed resistance but popular resistance is a program which is common to all the factions."

For the past three years, Abbas has gone from someone actively participating in negotiations to someone who adamantly refuses to even talk with Israel under identical circumstances that the PLO negotiated for fourteen years. He has furthermore made unilateral moves, such as his UN stunt, to avoid any possible compromise with Israel - and has bragged about his intransigence. He has upset the US and the EU with his refusal to negotiate.

So much for Abbas "standing still."

Now, as far as Hamas is concerned, let's look at what they have been saying and doing in just the past week or so.

From all evidence, Hamas sacked every member of its security forces that was not explicitly a Hamas member.

• Hamas reiterated that it will continue armed resistance against Israel.
• Hamas named a school in Gaza after a mass murderer.
• Hamas arrested four Fatah youth leaders, right after the "unity" meeting.
• Another Hamas leader again reiterated that armed resistance remains an option, forever.
• An analyst was quoted in Hamas' website as saying that Palestinian Arabs could never drop the option of armed resistance, because this right is (according to them) enshrined by the UN. Another emphasized that the current truce is simply to help strengthen Hamas and help Gaza recover, but it not a strategic option.
• Hamas' Gaza leaders expressed great skepticism about unity with Fatah, an initiative spearheaded by Hamas' Damascus leaders.
• And there is credible evidence that Hamas continues to import imported surface to air missiles into Gaza.

But Vick cannot be bothered to actually read Hamas websites in Arabic. No, if he can find an AFP interview in English, well, that must reflect the entire reality!

Hold on, though. Vick thinks he found a new piece of information!

Quite possibly biggest news out of Cairo was deep in the fine print: Efforts are under way to bring Hamas into the PLO, or Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella for all Palestinian factions. The PLO is the one "brand" that still resonates with ordinary Palestinians, and Hamas has wanted to join it since at least 2005. If Hamas finally gets in, the implications would appear to be immense. It would mean agreeing to the positions and agreements the PLO has already made. This includes recognizing Israel, and renouncing terror -- two things Hamas has never been willing to do. "Yes, when they are in they have to agree to the political program of the PLO," says Shaban. "This will take time." But should it occur, it would complete Hamas' move toward the center, and open the door to the international recognition craved by many in the organization.

Only one problem. It will never happen without the PLO changing its current stated positions.

Hamas cannot and will not recognize Israel. It cannot and will not accept a Jewish state in any form whatsoever. Literally. Its entire charter is based on Israel's destruction, and if Hamas can be counted upon for anything, it is to remain true to its principles.  They have been remarkably consistent in their stated positions since their inception. If Vick actually believes that Hamas is one bit closer to recognizing Israel than they were in 2005 or 1995, then he is an idiot who simply refuses to open his eyes.

I can see the PLO muddying the language of its recognition of Israel to accommodate Hamas. But it is absolutely inconceivable that Hamas would accept the current stated PLO position of recognizing Israel and officially being against terrorism (a position the PLO roundly ignored only a few short years ago anyway.)

Vick, like so many other journalists, cannot distinguish between reality and what he wants to believe. And then he feeds this misinformation into the minds of equally clueless decision makers who want to believe that peace is possible as much as Vick does, and who rely on clueless pundits like him to buy the myth of a flexible Palestinian Arab leadership (and, naturally, the intransigent Israelis - the only ones who have actually made real concessions for peace, multiple times, over decades of conflict.)

Hamas is not moderating, and it never will. Just as there were people who were convinced that Hamas had moderated during the 2005 elections, and that Hamas had moderated before Cast Lead, there will always be credulous and utterly incompetent analysts who believe that Hamas is becoming more peaceful now.

And no matter how many times these pundits are proven wrong, they will continue to push their hopes and dreams as if they are reality.
Elder of Ziyon

How Reaganomics Destroyed The Middle Class...And Maybe America

a few shootings at Kent State shut that down for good.

As San Francisco Weekly and others have noted, while discussing Occupy Wall Street on November 17, Ann Coulter stated: "So at the moment anyway, I mean I don't know what's going to happen in New York today, but at the moment I'm not really worried of a movement like SDS which really swept a lot of the college campuses taking over. Of course if it does, just remember the lesson from my book: it just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good.

Ann Coulter is one of the few public personalities to state what she believes. We could count the dead at Kent State on our fingers, but they registered with us more than the millions who had perished in Southeast Asia. As for the anti-war movement, the NG marksmen had "shut that down for good."

Recently, a clever film editor combined Hillary Clinton's denunciation of the Arab regimes punishment of Arab Spring demonstrators with the courtesies extended by the NYPD to #OWS rowdies. In each case hardly a regime changer, it is a painful reminder of hypocrisy yet to unfold. Thoughts of democracy and tranquility find a voice in both the Arab Spring and the OWS. This voice finds resonance among the youth of the world. They see how their parents ended up and wish to avoid that fate.

Good luck the authors of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of the 1920's would wish them. The horrors of WWI embedded in the public mind, no politician dared to make the case for another burst of world-engulfing destruction. Instead, the lust for war took a decade-long respite in Japan towards the conquest of Manchuria, China and the Southeast Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

The events of 7 December 1941 re-captured American hearts and minds for war. If Pearl Harbor was a contrivance, it gave birth to a string of preemptive wars that endure with us today.

South Africa: Nadine Gordimer vs ANC Censorship

Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer accuses the ANC of apartheid-style censorship

Secrecy law to muzzle press will affect all writers, says poet and fighter against black oppression
Read the letter

A woman wears symbolic tapes across her lips at a protest rally against the ANC's new secrecy law. Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP

Nobel prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer has spoken out against her government's controversial new secrecy legislation, suggesting it is a move back towards the harsh censorship that existed under apartheid.
In an article written for the ObserverGordimer said freedom of expression had been "struck out as a danger to the state", under the harsh Protection of State Information Bill, which may become law in South Africa by the end of the year. Leading commentators, editors and opposition parties dubbed the day the bill was passed in the South African parliament last week "Black Tuesday".
The bill bans the publication of classified documents – even if the information could be in the public interest – and allows the government to class almost any category of information as secret. Anyone involved in whistleblowing or any journalist or editor involved in publishing such information could face 25 years in prison. The bill is also seen as a way of the government controlling how it is represented, and there are worries that its provisions are so all-encompassing that it could even curtail freedom of expression in literature.
Gordimer argues that the attack on media freedom is an attack on everyone's "right to know and think", which would affect the work of all writers. ANC politicians have said the laws are necessary because the country is under threat from "spies" and foreign invasion, while state security minister Siyabonga Cwele has claimed that groups opposing the bill were "local proxies of foreign spies".
President Jacob Zuma has been accused of having too close a relationship with his country's security services and of conducting a personal vendetta against South African media who have been putting his party and his leadership under ever increasing scrutiny. Raymond Louw, veteran former anti-apartheid editor and media activist, has told reporters the law is a betrayal of the ANC's commitment to press freedom.
"The intention of this bill is to stop the media from disclosing corruption, malpractice and misgovernance, and inefficiencies," he said. "It is a betrayal of the commitment to a free press and the constitutional commitment to a free press because it is so wide-ranging. And it is not reasonable for them to want to cover up secrets beyond those which are absolutely necessary for protection of national security."
Gordimer's attack is likely to embarrass the ANC ruling party, especially those who are already uncomfortable with the bill, which has two further stages to go through before it is signed into law by Zuma.
The author pours scorn on the idea that South Africa might be under any kind of threat from outside forces, saying: "Is Cuba going to send an invasive force to bring to power our small communist party?"
She writes that the bill would not just affect the press but also poets, novelists and playwrights: "Workers in all literary modes will be subject to the bill through our fictional characters' actions and opinions, alive in our books."
The author has long links with the struggle against black oppression. She had three books banned under the infamous apartheid regime's censorship laws, along with an anthology of poetry by black South African writers that she collected and had published.
Gordimer was born in Gauteng, South Africa, in 1923 to immigrant European parents. She was called one of the great "guerrillas of the imagination" by the poet Seamus Heaney, and a "magnificent epic writer" by the Nobel committee, and is a hugely respected figure involved in charitable and anti-censorship projects.
She became active in the then banned South African National Congress after the Sharpeville massacre, and was one of the first people Nelson Mandela asked to see when he was released in 1990. When her west Johannesburg home was raided by violent robbers in 2006, it sparked national outrage.
The Observer, Hat tip to @A_ThinkingGirl

When the World Outlawed War

For war’s victims and most of its participants it always turns out to be the horror it appeared in 1918. But for those who know war only through U.S. television, the idea of criminalizing it sounds almost like proposing to criminalize government. That state of affairs is what I find disturbing, the realization of how normal it is to think of government as essentially responsible for large-scale killing. This is miles away from Warren Harding’s return to “normalcy” after World War I. Since World War II we have never returned to normalcy.

Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet: "David Swanson’s recently released book, When the World Outlawed War, tells the story of how the highly energized peace movement in the 1920s, supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens from every level of society, was able to push politicians into something quite remarkable - the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The 1920s 'War Outlawry' movement in the United States was so popular that most politicians could not afford to oppose it." 

We have banned slavery, genocide, rape and torture. In the recent decades the instances of these crimes against humanity have increased some say due to a disinterest in law enforcement.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact failed during the feverish run-up to WWII. Since that time we have institutionalized war in the form of the Military/Industrial Complex. It has formed the basic historical and cultural fantasy of a new religion: war. Outlawing it would criminalize the elements of its making.

Thailand: Suburban Crocadiles Move In

Floods Reveal Bangkok Crocodiles

Thailand's capital, Bangkok, has already been hit with its worst flooding in 50 years—and now it has to deal with huge crocodiles and poisonous snakes? Special teams from the Thai Fisheries Department have had to respond to numerous reports about crocodiles that have either escaped from the country's estimated 3,000 croc farms or moved into the city's outskirts as residents move out. But some of the reports could have been about giant monitor lizards, which are generally harmless. Calls about some of the world's most poisonous snakes have also spiked.

Read it at MSNBC