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Obama officials' spin on Benghazi attack mirrors Bin Laden raid untruths | Glenn Greenw... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...officials-spin-benghazi-attack opinion Libya US USA propaganda media spin analysis terrorism
shared by Ed Webb on 24 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The Obama White House's interest in spreading this falsehood is multi-fold and obvious:For one, the claim that this attack was just about anger over an anti-Muhammad video completely absolves the US government of any responsibility or even role in provoking the anti-American rage driving it. After all, if the violence that erupted in that region is driven only by anger over some independent film about Muhammad, then no rational person would blame the US government for it, and there could be no suggestion that its actions in the region – things like this, and this, and this, and this – had any role to play.
  • it's deeply satisfying to point over there at those Muslims and scorn their primitive religious violence, while ignoring the massive amounts of violence to which one's own country continuously subjects them. It's much more fun and self-affirming to scoff: "can you believe those Muslims are so primitive that they killed our ambassador over a film?" than it is to acknowledge: "our country and its allies have continually bombed, killed, invaded, and occupied their countries and supported their tyrants."
  • the self-loving mindset that enables the New York Times to write an entire editorial today purporting to analyze Muslim rage without once mentioning the numerous acts of American violence aimed at them
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Critics of the war in Libya warned that the US was siding with (and arming and empowering) violent extremists, including al-Qaida elements, that would eventually cause the US to claim it had to return to Libya to fight against them – just as its funding and arming of Saddam in Iraq and the mujahideen in Afghanistan subsequently justified new wars against those one-time allies
  • The falsehood told by the White House – this was just a spontaneous attack prompted by this video that we could not have anticipated and had nothing to do with – fixed all of those problems. Critical attention was thus directed to Muslims (what kind of people kill an ambassador over a film?) and away from the White House and its policies.
  • the number one rule of good journalism, even of good citizenship, is to remember that "all governments lie." Yet, no matter how many times we see this axiom proven true, over and over, there is still a tendency, a desire, to believe that the US government's claims are truthful and reliable.
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Yemeni graffiti artists hope images will highlight war horrors | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...yemen-street-art-idUSKCN12O22O graffiti Yemen art war hunger UN
shared by Ed Webb on 24 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Yemeni street artists are daubing the capital's walls with haunting images of war and starving children in an effort to highlight the impact conflict is having on the country's population.The graffiti, including a malnourished child locked in a blood-red coffin, is turning heads in a country where more than two thirds of the population are in need of some form of humanitarian aid, according to the united Nations.
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Why Breaking the Silence is prime target for Israeli right - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of t... - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...-yesh-din-punch-bag-right.html Israel Palestine israelpalestine NGOs IDF military media propaganda censorship politics settlers
shared by Ed Webb on 27 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • only the activists of one organization, Breaking the Silence, have the dubious honor of being labeled “traitors.” That organization, which has documented and published testimony by military veterans about human rights violations in the territories since 2004, draws more fire than all the other organizations put together.
  • There are those who explain that the reason this group of former soldiers has become the punching bag of the country stems from the fact that it is no longer limiting itself to activity within Israel’s borders. Not only does it publish reports in Hebrew, it translates them into English, gets funding from foreign organizations and individuals, and appears before foreign parliaments. To put it bluntly, many believe that dirty laundry should be washed at home. Not in the foreign media, not in the offices of the European union in Brussels and not in testimony before an investigative panel of the un Human Rights Committee. By the same logic, even if the average Israeli concedes that the occupation is a pollutant, he must put up with the smell. A good Israeli must shut the windows and keep the stench at home.
  • Unlike Netanyahu, Breaking the Silence is careful to publish information only after clearing it with military censors. Details that the censor bans from publication or those that are not verified do not see the light of day. The organization made it clear that the censor’s office had approved the publication of most of the testimony recorded by Ad Kan activists and aired on a Channel 2 television investigative report. It was this report that initially claimed that Breaking the Silence was gathering classified operational information Unrelated to soldiers’ testimony about human rights violations.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Breaking the Silence is being picked on for cynical political reasons. For Israeli Jews, there is no cow more sacred than the IDF. A clear majority, including this writer, served, are serving or will serve in the armed forces, just like their parents, children and even their grandchildren. When Defense Minister Lt. Gen.  (res.) Moshe Ya'alon declares that the members of Breaking the Silence are traitors, he means that they betrayed all Israelis. This is not an argument about occupation, ethics or Israel’s international standing. It's about our lives. Ya'alon was the commander-in-chief of the military, a respected authority on the matter.
  • The tacit conventional wisdom since the start of the so-called “knife intifada” is based on Talmudic teachings: “If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.” Or in common parlance, neutralize him first. Israeli politicians have called for people to do just this when confronted with a possible terrorist. There are even Jews who have already ascribed a broad interpretation to this order. Anyone coming to kill you, in their interpretation, may be a Jew willing to hand over territory to non-Jews. Assassin Yigal Amir, for instance, shot Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after rabbis and politicians incited against him and his peace policy. Netanyahu himself took part in a demonstration at which a Rabin cutout dressed in a Nazi SS uniform was held aloft. Today, in his dressing down of the organization, he is dressing Breaking the Silence in the uniform of a kapo.
  • “Patriots” who beat up Palestinians for kicks on city streets and set a bilingual school on fire have already started sending threats to Breaking the Silence activists and their families, including their elderly grandparents. If, God forbid, anyone is hurt, Netanyahu, Ya'alon and Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid will rush to issue “sharp condemnations” of the criminals. They will surely not forget to attack those spreading incitement, but they might forget or ignore their own past contributions.
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Why more Israelis are shying away from interaction with Palestinians - Al-Monitor: the ... - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...c-process-palestine-abbas.html Israel Palestine israelpalestine MEPP opinion poll polls politics diplomacy
shared by Ed Webb on 09 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The Peace Index for March 2016, published by the Israel Democracy Institute, shows that a sizable majority of the Jewish public rejects the distinction between global terrorism, nurtured by radical Islam, and Palestinian terrorism, nurtured by the desire to shake off the Israeli occupation. Of those polled, 64% said they agree with the idea espoused by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that global terrorism and Palestinian terrorism are one and the same.
  • Israelis are in no rush to change the status quo
  • Some 78% think Israel should not take into consideration international demands to refrain from “targeted killings” (as the Israel Defense Forces calls the killing of wanted Palestinians), demolitions of family homes of Palestinians involved in attacks on Israelis and other questionable means used by the Israeli defense establishment in the fight against terrorism.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • the younger a person's age, the greater his or her resistance to a diplomatic process to end the conflict with the Palestinians. Those younger than 34 tend, more than older adults, to rule out compromise on core issues
  • “The problem is that they are busy chasing an electorate that is running to the right.”
  • The belief in Israeli society that there is no Palestinian partner for peace has taken hold and refuses to let go.
  • On the Israeli side, there is no entity like the one established by the Palestine Liberation Organization to maintain interaction with Israeli society. Abbas appointed his close associate Mohammed al-Madani to head this committee. In a conversation with Al-Monitor in fluent Hebrew, the deputy head of the committee, Elias Zananiri, said that he has no beef with the Israeli public running away from contact with the Palestinians. “Of course I’m frustrated with our lack of success in breaching the walls of Israeli fear and loathing, but I’m not completely surprised,” said Zananiri. “What do you expect of Jewish citizens whose leader questions the basic democratic rights of Israel’s Arab citizens?”
  • Ed Webb on 09 Apr 16
     
    Ugh - don't read the comments
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Human Rights Watch Condemns Controversial Defamation Bill : Tunisia Live - News, Econom... - 0 views

www.tunisia-live.net/...-controversial-defamation-bill Tunisia blasphemy censorship law ennahda
shared by Ed Webb on 05 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • a new bill that would ban blasphemy in Tunisia. The draft bill, proposed to the Constituent Assembly on Wednesday by Tunisia’s ruling moderate Islamist party Ennahdha, would criminalize “insults, profanity, derision, and representation of Allah and Mohammed.”
  • ” If passed, the draft law would punish such violations of “sacred values” with prison terms of up to two years and fines of up to 2,000 dinars (U.S. $1,236) through an additional article to the Tunisian Penal Code.
  • Mrad justified the bill’s proposal by explaining that the protection of religious symbols does not inherently represent an attack on freedom of expression. “In all societies, you will always find limits and things that you cannot say,” he said, adding, “We [Ennahdha] are committed to granting freedom of expression, but this law is just to set limits for this freedom.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • General Comment 34, a statement issued by the UN Human Rights Committee in July of 2011 stating that defamation of religion is not an acceptable reason for limiting freedoms of speech. According to paragraph 48 of the declaration, “Prohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the Covenant, except in specific circumstances…” Such “specific circumstances” include cases in which national or individual security is deemed to be threatened.
  • Although the country lacks laws criminalizing blasphemy, Article 121.3 of Tunisia’s penal code – which criminalizes disruptions that “harm public order or morality” – has been used to convict individuals found guilty of acts that could be perceived as attacks against Islam.
  • A prosecutor in Tunisia can prosecute on the basis of these two laws together and can add to the sentence. We have seen this in other countries, in other contexts.
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Al Jazeera English - Americas - US to boycott UN racism conference - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...200922855014421433.html United Nations United States Obama Administration Israel Canada
shared by Michael Fisher on 03 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • Michael Fisher on 03 Mar 09
     
    The United States, Canada and Israel will not send representatives to the United Nations racism conferene in Geneva. They say that the draft resolution was not acceptable.
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TypePad = CrapPad » CogDogBlog - 0 views

cogdogblog.com/...typepad-crappad
shared by Ed Webb on 05 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 05 Feb 09
     
    Note the frustration that un-transparent technology can cause (in this case, to a very seasoned web user). And the importance of commenting on blogs. That's where the conversation is, in large part.
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Swiss ban on minarets was a vote for tolerance and inclusion | csmonitor.com - 1 views

www.csmonitor.com/...p09s01-coop.html Switzerland minarets Islamophobia hirsiali opinion
shared by Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09 - Cached
  • By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  • There are two ways to interpret the vote.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      Actually, I can think of many more than two ways to interpret it. This is a very limited way of framing the issue.
  • None of those Western academics, diplomats, and politicians who condemn the Swiss vote to ban the minaret address, let alone dispute, these facts.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      I'm a Western academic, and former diplomat, and I'm disputing these 'facts'.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Imams can then preach a message of self-segregation and a bold rejection of the ways of the non-Muslims.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      Sure. But they can also preach about, you know, pretty much anything. They can preach a message of tolerance and inclusion, too, and having a minaret doesn't actually change things either way.
  • And this is what the Swiss vote shows us. This is a confrontation between local, working-class voters (and some middle-class feminists) and Muslim immigrant newcomers who feel that they are entitled, not only to practice their religion, but also to replace the local political order with that of their own.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      This may be what the vote shows you. But you have shown no scrap of evidence that the small minority of Swiss who are Muslims have any such agenda. All there is so far is a tendentious Islamophobic narrative backed by the coarsest of generalizations. Where's the substance?
  • It is remarkable that the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said in public that the Swiss vote is a poor act of diplomacy
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      I'm with you there. Very odd and poor choice of words there. The UN condemnation of the vote as intolerance was more to the point.
  • There is indeed a wider international confrontation between Islam and the West. The Iraq and Afghan wars are part of that, not to mention the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. That confrontation should never be confused with the local problem of absorbing those Muslims who have been permitted to become permanent residents and citizens into European societies.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
       
      The problem here is that if you're going to accept the Huntington master-narrative of clash of civilizations, then you cannot really separate these things. If you want to see a confrontation between "Islam" and the "West" then you have to accept that it is within as well as across borders. It is much easier to separate out the domestic and foreign policy issues if you abandon the narrative of the 'clash' - I recommend it.
  • Ed Webb on 06 Dec 09
     
    Hirsi Ali's opinion.
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Al Jazeera English Blacked Out Across Most Of U.S. - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...zeera-english-us_n_816030.html jazeera aljazeera US USA media
shared by Ed Webb on 31 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to Al Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem
  • "It is downright un-American to still refuse to carry it," wrote Jeff Jarvis on Sunday. "Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one-not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media-can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can."
  • Al Jazeera is the scourge of authoritarian governments around the Middle East, which attempt to block it. The network, however, covers much more than the Middle East, and now has more bureaus in Latin America than CNN and the BBC, said Burman. "As proud as we are of our Middle Eastern coverage, we are in other places in the world that are never, never seen on television in American homes," he said.
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Mohammad Khatami, a Former President, Criticizes Iran's Government - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...07iran.html Iran election Gramsci ideology media
shared by Ed Webb on 07 Sep 09 - Cached
  • opposition leaders — much like their hard-line foes — are girding supporters for a long-term battle to be waged as much through ideas and quiet social organizing as through the public protests that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election on June 12. Both Mr. Khatami and members of the group he addressed, the Islamic Society of university Professors, expressed deep concerns about threats to academic freedom in the coming school year. On Saturday, after days of calls by conservatives to purge Iran’s universities of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” the government announced the start of a high-level investigation on how the humanities are taught.
  • a “soft war” against internal enemies. Anyone in the field of culture must now recognize important distinctions between “friends and enemies,” “attack and defense” and “explanation and propaganda,”
  • He warned that the West, with its sophisticated media outlets, is better equipped for soft war than Iran.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • like his conservative counterparts, Mr. Moussavi also spoke of the need to deepen his movement with a “social approach, not only a political approach.” And he suggested that the opposition movement, despite its apparent weakness in the face of arrests, trials and intimidation, had won substantial moral victories.“Despite the regretful, bitter developments of recent days,” Mr. Moussavi wrote, “people now have timeless convictions that are miles more important than the election of one man.”
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Johann Hari: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...eing-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html Somalia pirates piracy imperialism crime
shared by Ed Webb on 12 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
  • In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
  • Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas."
  • During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
  • The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
  • Ed Webb on 12 Apr 09
     
    Via @3arabawy and @cburrell
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Israel shoots the messenger: An open letter to Ban Ki-Moon | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...n-letter-ban-ki-moon-264475500 UN UNSG Israel Palestine israelpalestine opinion diplomacy
shared by Ed Webb on 06 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 06 Feb 16
     
    Ouch!
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From journalists to generals, Algeria cracks down on dissent | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-media-and-activists-133082924 Algeria censorship propganda rights media activism activists journalists
shared by Ed Webb on 09 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • While the economic crisis related to the fall of oil revenues has caused political and social tensions, the Algerian authorities are showing increasing intolerance towards criticism, already under attack since the start of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s fourth term in April 2014.
  • Hassina Oussedik, director of Amnesty International’s chapter in Algeria, says the attacks on freedom of expression have been "constant". "In 2015, not a month has passed without witnessing cases of people being oppressed as they try to express themselves peacefully. The authorities rely on poorly formulated or ambiguous laws to arrest people," she told Middle East Eye. "They use provisions of the penal code that criminalise 'contempt', 'insult' or 'defamation' aimed against representatives of the state and other institutions in order to restrict freedom of expression, including humour, expression on the internet and on the street."
  • But an Algerian police officer, in charge of monitoring public demonstrations, said claims of repression were excessive and defended his activities."Repression? Dictatorship? Censorship? All of this is much exaggerated and is far from the truth," he told MEE. "If we did not do our job of monitoring and surveillance, Islamists and terrorists would feel omnipotent. In the 90s, this led us to chaos! Is it normal to insult the state, the president, the police or the army with impunity?"
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A former minister also defends the state’s repressive policy: "Newspapers, with their criticisms and caricatures that spare no one, even the president and the army chief, aren’t they free? But the law will remain strict against those who attack the institutions and the nation; we are not a gang of criminals who must be denounced all the time. We are servants of the state and those who criticise the government are attacking Algeria."
  • In the former minister's view, the majority of social opposition movements, jobless in the south, anti-shale gas activists, subversive artists and independent publishers, are simply “naive people manipulated by forces hostile to Algeria and its government’s patriotic choices".
  • Minister of Communications Hamid Grine, described by the Workers Party leader Louisa Hanoune as the “propaganda minister”.Regularly, the minister threatens journalists, independent media, foreign press correspondents and activists on social media in the name of "ethics". He imposed the closure of two private TV channels, Atlas TV and El Watan El Djazairia TV, and publicly refused to grant accreditation to foreign press correspondents, including a journalist from the London-based daily Asharq Al Awsat, demanding that they "toe the line".
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