Illegal settlements, land grabs and US tax dollars

11 June, 2009 — peoplesgeography


Despite US calls for it to be halted, Israel has said that illegal settlements will continue in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Palestinians fear that the Obama administration’s words will not be enough to secure concrete action to stop more land grabs.  Al Jazeera’s Noor Odeh reports from the occupied West Bank in the clip below.

Meanwhile, a reminder of an excellent campaign in the US by the Council for the National Interest (CNI), who have put together these awareness-raising posters, also available for sending as a postcard. Overall, US government aid to the hafrada Israeli regime comes to almost $3 Billion a year. (Click on image for larger size)

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Posted in Israel, Palestine, US Foreign Policy, Video. Tags: . Leave a Comment »

Hold your applause

9 June, 2009 — peoplesgeography

Chris Hedges is another one of the clear skeptics after Obama’s Cairo address; his sober assessment is a reminder of how grim things look from the pointy, receiving end of US foreign policy for many people. The appropriately arresting visuals come courtesy of fine American cartoonists of conscience Andy Singer, Mr Fish and Jimmy Margulies.

andy_singer_arms_made_in_usaDid they play Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in the prison corridors of Abu Ghraib, Bagram air base, Guantanamo or the dozens of secret sites where we hold thousands of Muslims around the world? Did it echo off the walls of the crowded morgues filled with the mutilated bodies of the Muslim dead in Baghdad or Kabul? Was it broadcast from the tops of minarets in the villages and towns decimated by U.S. iron fragmentation bombs? Was it heard in the squalid refugee camps of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians live in the world’s largest ghetto?

What do words of peace and cooperation mean from us when we torture—yes, we still torture—only Muslims? What do these words mean when we sanction Israel’s brutal air assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, assaults that demolished thousands of homes and left hundreds dead and injured? How does it look for Obama to call for democracy and human rights from Egypt, where we lavishly fund and support the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest-reigning dictators in the Middle East?

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Posted in US Foreign Policy, War. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

Responses to Obama's Speech: An Attitudinal National and Ethnic Divide?

5 June, 2009 — peoplesgeography

Links added

In scanning the progressive press, I’d like to add an observation to Idrees’ survey of the online reaction to Obama’s speech about an interesting pattern that seems to have emerged. A list follows by way of illustration, and then I’ll draw out why I think a significant attitudinal divide may exist and speculate about why it is there.

Largely Lauding

Largely Skeptical

  • Ali Abunimah (A Bush in sheep’s clothing)
  • As’ad Abu Khalil (Chicanery and intelligence-insulting, vapid and sinister)
  • Yaman @ Kabobfest (”A little Qur’an here, a little civilizational worth there, and abracadabra, the Muslims are happy again!)
  • Ahdaf Soueif (Global moral standing still elusive if sectional interests prevail — my précis)
  • Hossam el-Hamalawy (“Republicans screw the Arabs. Democrats screw the Arabs, but with a smile,” is a popular saying among the dissidents’ circles in Egypt.)  See also el-Hamalawy’s (aka the Arabist) pre-speech NYT Op-Ed.

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Posted in Media, Middle East, US Foreign Policy. Tags: . 22 Comments »

The Battle for Lebanon

29 May, 2009 — peoplesgeography
election rally

Election rally in Beirut

Except for employing the inaccurate and hackneyed description of Hezbollah as “the Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalist group”, Robert Dreyfuss has a worthwhile piece commenting on the upcoming Lebanese elections and US foreign policy perspectives, in which he notably scans the hysterical neocon press. He also comments on the Der Spiegel claims which I’ve omitted but can be read in the original (see also Der Spiegel’s Sensational Hariri Tribunal ‘Breakthrough’: “Hezbollah Did It” (Updated) and Der Spiegel Tries Again) in a post he’s entitled ‘The Battle of Lebanon’, but which might just as equally be characterized as The Battle for Lebanon:

Five days before the crucial elections in Iran on June 12, voters go to the polls in another Middle East country: Lebanon. The stakes in Lebanon are high, since it’s looking more and more likely that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalist group, and its allies will win a majority and take control of the government in Beirut. That would create a fundamental choice for the Obama administration: does the United States continue to have contact with, and send military aid to, a Lebanese government controlled by Israel’s implacable foe?

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Posted in Elections, Hezbollah, Lebanon, US Foreign Policy. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

Israel’s covert war on Iran faces White House opposition

18 May, 2009 — peoplesgeography
leunig-kill-leader-movement

"Look at that! Brilliant! You kill the leader and you nip the whole movement in the bud." (Leunig)

While there are a lot of (likely necessarily) unnamed sources and “officials say” in this piece by Richard Sale featured at Colonel Pat Lang’s Sic Temper Tyrannis, it is more importantly notable for suggesting a significant divergence between the US Obama administration and the israeli Netanyahu regime on Iran. We will see whether this bears out and whether Sale overstates significant US reservations as strong opposition; see also the ensuing discussion at STT.

Facing mounting U.S. opposition behind the scenes, Israel still plans to continue a covert operation to delay Iran’s nuclear program by assassinating key Iranian scientists, U.S. officials said.

The Israeli program which has been in place for almost a decade, involves not only targeted killings of key Iranian assets but also disrupting and sabotaging the Iran nuclear technology purchasing network abroad, these sources said.

Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst for Stratfor, a U.S. private intelligence company, commented publicly that key Iranian nuclear scientists were the targets of the strategy. “With cooperation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key (Iranian) assets involved in the nuclear program and the sabotaging of the Iranian nuclear supply chain.”

But U.S. opposition to the program has intensified as President Barack Obama has made overtures aimed at thawing decades-old tension between the two countries. Part of this is due to America’s desire to use Iran’s roads into Afghanistan to help resupply U.S.-NATO forces there.

But Israel’s interests in the region are not America’s, several U.S. officials said.

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Posted in Iran, Israel, Nuclear Politics, Palestine, US Foreign Policy, USA. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

What goes around …

14 May, 2009 — peoplesgeography

A very good visual campaign — one of four posters — for the Global Coalition for Peace. See the rest of the posters at the Inspiration Room (thanks Dean).

What goes around

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Posted in Images, Iraq, US Foreign Policy, US military. Tags: . 1 Comment »

Justin Raimondo Calls Out Jon Stewart: Wimp, Wuss, Moral Coward

6 May, 2009 — peoplesgeography

Justin Raimondo of the indispensable Anti-war.com has caught a recent backflip from the affable Jon Stewart, the host of a comedy show that usually conveys more truth, by way of acceptably conveyed satire, than most “news” programs. But this time Stewart overstepped the invisibly drawn bounds of the circumscribed script within which “liberals” (in the US parlance) are expected to keep within on mainstream television (the no-go zones include topics such as 9/11, western war criminals, and israeli atrocities), by calling former US President Harry Truman a war criminal. In a culture that still lionises racist war criminals like Churchill as “statesmen”, Stewart’s description of a clear war crime as a war crime surprised Raimondo. Raimondo was soon to be disappointed however, as Stewart later backtracked on his critique and apologised. Even 70 odd years later, presidential crimes and national legacies are obviously still a sensitive topic. Apart from his characterisation of Chavez as “equally thuggish” with Netanyahu and a few minor quibbles, here is Raimondo’s well argued j’accuse which takes well-liked Stewart to task:

Can a Democrat commit war crimes? Of course not!

I was a bit surprised, albeit pleasantly, to see Jon Stewart nail Harry Truman as a war criminal. After all, Stewart is a typical Hollywood liberal, whose politics are by now a staple of the corporate, anodyne culture that permeates the airwaves, and this naturally excludes everything that might challenge the liberal groupthink that constitutes the conventional wisdom in the Age of Obama.

Certainly, in “respectable” quarters, criticism of anything or anyone connected to the great liberal “anti-fascist” crusade, the “Good War,” is strictly verboten, and surely an intelligent guy like Stewart knows this. Yet – contrary to what he said later – this wasn’t an argument that arose in the heat of the moment, in the context of a robust discussion with obnoxious neocon Clifford May on the alleged merits of torture. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Media, US Foreign Policy, USA. Tags: , . 1 Comment »

Neocon HQ Launches Anti-Iran Propaganda Site

3 May, 2009 — peoplesgeography

Attempting to re-group as Obamacons, the dangerous and discredited neocons are still plugging away in their nefarious sabre-rattling. As friend and esteemed fellow blogger Damian Lataan notes in the following, this includes the launching of a new site to demonise Iran on the cyber-propaganda front.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think-tank organisation long regarded as neoconservative headquarters, recently launched a website dedicated to demonising the Islamic Republic of Iran. The site, called ‘Irantracker’, besides being clearly set up to propagandise Iran, tells one a lot about the neoconservative agenda which, in turn – and far more importantly – reveals even more about the agenda of the Zionists of Israel, to whom the neoconservatives are subservient, and their intentions toward Iran.

Israeli extreme right-wing Zionist and current Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has had a long and close relationship with the AEI and it is no coincidence that the ‘Irantracker’ site was set up at around the time that it was beginning to look like Netanyahu was going to get up as Prime Minister prior to the recent Israeli elections.

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Posted in Iran, Israel, Israel Lobby, Neocons, Palestine, US Foreign Policy. 1 Comment »

Obama's First 100 Days: The 'Mad Men' Did Well

30 April, 2009 — peoplesgeography

hopenosisBeyond Brand Obama, John Pilger proffers an alternative appraisal of the Obama administration’s vaunted first 100 days. Also have a look at Jeremy’s Scahill’s Obama’s Iraq: The Picture of Dorian Gray and the laudable 100 Days Campaign.

The BBC’s American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, US Foreign Policy, USA, War crimes. Tags: , . 2 Comments »

Virtual Guantánamo

30 April, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

Visiting Guantánamo in Second Life — showcasing one of the better uses to which the virtual interactive world can be put. Draxtor Despres visited the virtual detention center in SL for a taste of the treatment inmates endure. See also the 100 Days Campaign to Close Guantánamo and End Torture.

Posted in Torture, US Foreign Policy, USA, Video. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »
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