Palestinians Remember: In Their Own Words

2 June, 2009 — peoplesgeography

An excellent documentary that serves as an oral people’s history for Palestinian life before, during and after the Nakba. Filmed in over 15 countries and produced by Perla Issa, Aseel Mansour and Adam Shapiro with more than 250 interviews of Palestinian refugees, Chronicles of a Refugee is the first documentary film to look at the global Palestinian refugee experience over the last 60 years. Its 82 minutes so by all means watch it in installments but do persevere for these moving accounts of Palestinian resilience. They will return. (H/t Laurie King).

Posted in History, Palestine, Video. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Imperial History of the Middle East

2 May, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

From Maps of War. Started as a hobby in 2006, the site features various short historical geographies such as the Imperial History of the Middle East and the History of Religion, both of which (below) are flash animations that cover 5000 years of history in 90 seconds. The other flash maps are variable but I found these the pick of the bunch. Also test your Middle East and North African geography in this drag-and-drop quiz.

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Posted in Education, Geography, History, Maps. Leave a Comment »

Mamdani on Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror

16 April, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

mahmood_mamdani Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani in conversation with Khalil Bendib on the always worthwhile KPFA. Extending earlier work, Mamdani discusses his new work and continues to demolish the myths spouted by the zio-ideologues within the ‘Save Darfur’ movement.

His new book is Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror. If you’d like to skip the introduction, move the cursor along the audio above to the 4 minute mark. The excellent talk goes for about 30 minutes.

Professor Mamdani has had a number of speaking events in the past week, including at Berkeley City Club and at Columbia Teacher’s College (here’s one account by an attendee at Mondoweiss).

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Posted in Audio, Darfur, History, Sudan. Tags: , . 2 Comments »

Shlomo Sand speaks on The Invention Of The Jewish People

16 April, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

shlomo_sand_book_coverYou may recall historian Shlomo Sand re-ignited a debate last year (The Invention of the Diaspora: Shattering a National Mythology?) upon the release of his book When And How The Jewish People Was Invented (translation from Hebrew Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi?).  The book is now forthcoming in English with the title The Invention of the Jewish People.

Like Arthur Koestler’s work before him, the book confronts the myth that Jews are a discernibly national group that can claim a biological-genealogical connection to the biblical Jews of 2000 years ago. This is significant because it challenges the claims in both Judaism and zionism that are predicated upon the notion of exile and return.

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Posted in Audio, Books, History, Israel, Jewry. Tags: , . 6 Comments »

Ex-communicated: Landscapes of Occupation in Palestine

22 January, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

An excellent Alternate Focus documentary by US communications-academic Gary Fields which examines Palestine through the lens of landscape. Fields does a great job with photographs and with the narration, highlighting the peaceful civil resistance campaigns at Bil’in and Budros.  Thanks to Sonja Karkar for passing it on. R/t 28 mins

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Posted in History, Palestine, Video, Zionism. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

The Six Day War Deceptions: A Historical Corrective

19 January, 2009 — peoplesgeography

These excellent Dutch videos are an important historical corrective to one of the widely propagated founding myths of the state of Israel, that in 1967 its Six Day wars, which saw Israeli theft and occupation of Palestinian territory, were defensive.  These eyewitness accounts and testimonies puts paid to the canard of an ‘existential threat’ that the Israeli political establishment continues to claim — rather, right from the start, the reverse has been true.

A Dutch UN observer in 1966-67, Jan Muhren, describes how he witnessed how Israel provoked their Arab neighbours in the run-up to the Six-Day War on Dutch Nova TV (clips below). The former UN observer in Gaza and the West Bank has said Israel was not under siege by Arab countries preceding the Six-Day War, and that Israel provoked most border incidents, which Muhren surmises was part of its strategy to annex more land.

As the second clip shows, Moshe Dayan admitted as much to Israeli journalist Rami Tal, in an interview only released after Dayan’s death. Dayan corroborates Muhren’s eyewitness accounts that over 80% of the border incidents were Israeli provocations. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Israel, Palestine. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

The Gaza Ghetto: A Visual Essay

17 January, 2009 — peoplesgeography

An arresting visual essay of unknown provenance reproduced here. Thanks Dean. I wonder if the Nazi comparison and parallels helps or detracts from the Palestinian cause. Since the Israeli Likud in particular seem to invoke untenable Nazi projections on to Iran (Bibi: “this is 1938“), perhaps we should be recruiting striking historical parallels to wake those who still, remarkably, can not see the horror and call for its immediate cessation.

BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS

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Posted in Gaza, Genocide, History, Israel. Tags: . 3 Comments »

Joyeux Noël, two scenes

25 December, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com

Two memorable clips from the movie Joyeux Noël (2005) set in the so-called ‘Great War’ (though there’s nothing ‘great’ about war!), centered around the true story of the Christmas Truce along the Western Front. Scottish, German and French soldiers came to an impromptu ceasefire on Christmas Eve, December 1914 during World War One, the first of many occasions soldiers laid down their arms across the trenches.

This is one moving moment in an otherwise bleak episode in modern history, in a war where around 16 million are estimated to have died, and a further 21 million wounded.

You can see the whole film in its constituent scenes at YouTube. Thanks to Dave for reminding me of this scene:

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Posted in Christianity, Christmas, Europe, History, Video, War. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

Billion Dollar Brains: How Wealth Puts Knowledge in its Pocket

11 December, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com

ftv-02From the Vaults II:

This is the second article of a series on foundations, academia and their role in Empire-building, first published in 1969. The first article can be read here.

Part III of this series, Sinews of Empire, is already available online and tells how these ‘billion dollar brains’, in conjunction with US federal support, created the sinews of a global empire.

Originally published in Ramparts, May 1969. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Academe, Foundations, Hegemon-watch, History, USA. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

From the Vaults: The Foundations Part I

11 December, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com

ftv-02Introducing a new feature: From the Vaults. Here, we aim to highlight significant articles of historical value and contemporary import as they come across the digital desk and that may not be available elsewhere on the web.

While university and other library databases and archives are increasingly being digitized, there are still many important and interesting articles and publications that ought to see the light of day again. Often these have to be manually typed and/or digitally scanned by researcher friends, for which we are grateful.

This piece on liberal foundations in the USA co-written by ex-Marxist-turned neocon David Horowitz (yes, that David Horowitz). Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Foundations, Hegemon-watch, History, USA. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »
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