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"Pakistan must refuse to pay foreign debt and divert the amount on relief and rehabilitation of flood hit communities. Instead of begging for much-needed aid for relief and rehabilitation, Pakistan must stand up and announce unilateral suspension of repayment of foreign debts, owed to International Finance Institutions, donor countries and clubs."
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Joyce Zonana: Next Year in Cairo
"I often anger Jewish acquaintances when I declare that my family lost its homeland because of the establishment of the Jewish state. It's an over simplified view of things, I know, but it holds a truth. Middle Eastern Jews lived peacefully in Egypt for generations before European Jews created their state in a place where Palestinians had lived for generations."
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Making hate respectable | SocialistWorker.org
"THESE DIFFERENT expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry have a common source--and it isn't simply the racist pandering that is the stock and trade of right-wing political leaders like Palin, Gingrich and Beck. The demonization of Islam is the ideological face of the U.S. drive to control the flow of oil from the Middle East and to project its military and political influence around the world."
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Iara Lee: Hip Hop as Global Resistance
"Without sounding grateful, it is interesting to see how failed American policies and their calamitous effects have bred vibrant hip-hop cultures both here and abroad. Although hip-hop in America has become largely dominated by consumer culture, the roots of the form remain strong and have spread abroad, from ghetto to ghetto, as a common tool of resistance and cultural affirmation. Will rap music alone save Palestine, end the war in Iraq, and end colonialism once and for all? Probably not. But hip-hop has presented itself to Arab youth as one of the few tools available to them to remind the western world, in its own language, that they are still here, and that they will not be silenced."
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Revolutionary Flowerpot Society: Khiaban No. 74: On Moussavi's Green Charter
"We can find the dissonances between the Green Charter and the people's street movement in this very text, where it states that it emphasizes the necessity of joining with the middle and lower classes and the meek in the society. This very sentence reveals that Moussavi and other drafters of this platform are separate from the dominated people and the oppressed, and that they are above them (even if they really want to join them, they still considers themselves separate from the dominated). They belong to the layer of the rulers, of the dominant classes. Alas, no society has ever been liberated by the dominant layers of that society. Those who in the current situation suffer the most inequalities will be the first to take steps to destroy the bars of this prison house. Only a platform that takes stock of, and bases itself on, the fighters' memories and imagination can stay loyal to the society: a platform, whose lines are not niceties and considerations of the people up above, but one that the wrath and the hopes of the people down below write its lines."
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"By the same token, nowadays I often hear these cute white hipster lesbians with their fancy haircuts, mock, in all their entitlement, what they understand as "hip hop" when they hear pop icon Lil Wayne use the phrase "no homo" after a verse describing love for men in his life. From pigeonholing dancehall music and now hip hop, one must wonder how Color, whether here, in the Global South, or in the refugee camps of Gaza, is such an easy target for gay activists. I can't help but speculate that some of the neoliberal racism that I have witnessed in the Canadian gay "community" has some role to play in this quick condemnation.
I also wonder why discussions around the "bad homophobic Jamaica" lack any historical context of colonization -- how colonial powers have historically used same-sex violence as a tool of repression with long-term cultural and psychological consequences, and how colonial powers have used and imposed sodomy laws to distinguish the civilized from uncivilized. To point out the absurdity that the reprimanding of "Bad Jamaica" lacks any historical context of colonization I am forced to quote Celina Jaitley, a contemporary Bollywood actress and beauty queen. Commenting on decriminalizing homosexuality and addressing homophobia in India, Jaitley says that "Over 100 years ago, it wasn't Indians who frowned upon homosexuality, it was the British who came on our land and introduced their colonial laws, and it is high time we repeal them."" -
ei: Israelis embrace one-state solution from unexpected direction
"Of course Israeli Jews still retain an enormous power advantage over Palestinians which, while eroding, is likely to last for some time. Israel's main advantage is a near monopoly on the means of violence, guaranteed by the United States. But legitimacy and stability cannot be gained by reliance on brute force -- this is the lesson that is starting to sink in among some Israelis as the country is increasingly isolated after its attacks on Gaza and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Legitimacy can only come from a just and equitable political settlement.
Perhaps the right-wing proponents of a single state recognize that the best time to negotiate a transition which provides safeguards for Israeli Jews' legitimate collective interests is while they are still relatively strong." -
ei: Uribe's appointment to flotilla probe guarantees its failure
"It is hard to believe that, in spite of Uribe's appalling human rights record, he has been chosen to be part of a UN human rights commission. Going beyond Uribe himself, any representative of the Colombian state must be suspect when it comes to investigating human rights violations as official and "unofficial" state-sanctioned human rights abusers act with impunity; 98 percent of such cases remain unprosecuted ("Baseless Prosecutions of Human Rights Defenders in Colombia," February 2009)."
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FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau: Iranian Identity, the 'Aryan Race,' and Jake Gyllenhaal | PBS
"Not only is Aryanism a relic of nineteenth-century European thought with an ignominious legacy, but its Iranian variety is a symptom of an entrenched complex of inferiority, a desperate attempt to be something other than a "mere Iranian." This complex is rooted in a traumatic encounter with Europe that took place two centuries ago. It thus alarms me that to this very day, serious Iranian intellectuals tell a wide audience that "Iranians are Aryans." Moreover, the belief that Aryans are supposed to be "fair" is rooted in a hypothesis fashionable in the 1930s according to which the cradle of the Aryan race, its Urheimat, was the Scandinavian Peninsula. It was this "Northern Hypothesis" that was at work in Nazi Germany's depictions of Aryans as a glorious blond, blue-eyed race. It is unfortunate that when people claim that we once all looked like Jake Gyllenhaal, they do not realize that they are referring to relics of the sort of thought at work in the minds of Nazi ideologues. This only highlights the urgent need for Iranians to question their identity myths and get rid of the distortional, racialist, bigoted view of their identity that they have inherited from Old Europe. "
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Rebel Frequencies: Shut the [expletive] Up: An Open Letter to Elton John
"Protests against SB 1070 have included activists from the LGBT and Palestinian communities. During the bombardment of Gaza in late 2008, activists witnessed rainbow flags and members of immigrant communities among the crowd. Activists from each movement have realized their common struggle.
These activists and artists aren’t a passive audience waiting for you to spoon-feed them your songs. They are not people who are going to allow for their own stories to be maligned like you have that of the miners. They are not “cherry-picking.” They aren’t “fuckwits.” They are people who believe that the things we hold dear in our lives--our labor, our art--shouldn’t be used to buttress inequality.
There’s an old saying from the ‘60s: you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution. We’re part of the solution, Elton. Guess which side you’re on." -
Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, "Puerto Rico Remembers Independence Fighter Lolita Lebrón"
On the death of Lolita Lebrón, a freedom fighter for Puerto Rican independence.
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Is TIME’s Afghan “cover girl” really a victim of mutilation by the Taleban? « ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY
"TIME’s story does not provide its readers with any specific or credible factual text and context about what has really caused the deformity in this young woman’s face. Like much fiction that has been produced in the shadow of the American war machine in Afghanistan, this “story” appears to be a string of hearings and imaginings about women’s life in Afghanistan put together by Aryn Baker and Jodi Bieber, two young American journalists who probably first encountered Afghanistan in the pages of “the kite runner”. Having the readers see the reporters’ pictures (p. 4) in a “Kabul kite shop” speaks to the compelling impact of the untruths about life in Kabul in that “bestseller” book. What is the relationship of kites to a story about a mutilated nose? TIME’s story by Baker and Bieber has no truth value. Let us have a closer look at some of the cultural content and ethnographic claims in this fabricated telltale."
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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