November 1, 2012

That post was attacking Australia for being intolerant at the governmental level...

I did ask the poster what it had to do with the OP, seeing it was an article about a tribunal awarding compensation to someone for pain and suffering caused to them from bigoted comments aimed at them, but they didn't bother answering...

August 3, 2012

The Tra La La Song (Banana Splits Theme) - Liz Phair and Material Issue...

Best song ever coz it makes me simultaneously nostaligic for the 70's and 90's...

July 31, 2012

Bob Carr raises concerns over plight of Palestinian children in Israeli jails

AUSTRALIA has formally raised concerns with Israel about the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons.

This follows an article in The Weekend Australian Magazine last November detailing the operations of Israel's military court, which imprisons Palestinian children as young as 12.

Following that report, then foreign minister Kevin Rudd instructed officials to visit the court, which they have since done twice.

This week a spokesman for his successor, Bob Carr, said officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had met Israel's chief military prosecutor.

"DFAT officials raised concerns about the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli jails, and have continued to urge Israel to protect human rights and the welfare of children," he said.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bob-carr-raises-concerns-over-plight-of-palestinian-children-in-israeli-jails/story-fn59niix-1226437135874

July 30, 2012

WATCH: Hamas, far-right Jews prepare their children for holy war

The Temple Institute, an ultra-nationalist Jewish organization that is obsessed with rebuilding Solomon’s Temple exactly on the spot where the Dome of the Rock is located today in Jerusalem’s Old City, released the video below just in time for Tish’a b’Av (the Ninth of Av according to the Jewish calendar). On this day, Jews traditionally spend the day fasting and mourning the destruction of the ancient temple – as well as a long list of other tragedies that are alleged to have befallen the Jewish people on that day. Or they gather to greet Mitt Romney at the Western Wall.

<snip>

The talented brother and sister in this video seem to want to pre-empt the messiah. They startle their father into dropping his copy of the Jerusalem Post when he sees the remarkably accurate model of the temple they managed to create out of sand in the time it took him to read a single article about the civil war in Syria. As the sun sets over the sea, he leads his two children away and the camera pans out to allow the viewer a wide-angle view of the spectacular sand temple.

Not to be outdone, Hamas created a video of its own. In the Hamas version, below, a loving father takes his two children to the beach in Gaza. Like the Jewish children at the beach just a half-hour’s drive up the coast – assuming no checkpoints or walls, of course – the children are an adorable brother and sister who frolic fully clothed at the beach, for some reason eschewing bathing suits despite the summer heat.

After he pauses briefly to pray, the Gazan father watches fondly as his children construct a replica of the Dome of the Rock out of sand. The father tears a piece off his newspaper, writes something on the slip of paper, attaches it to a matchstick and plants it on the dome of the mosque. As the sun sets over the Med he leads his children away by the hand and the camera gives us a close up of the flag so that we can see what’s written on it: “There is no god but God.”

http://972mag.com/watch-hamas-and-far-right-jewish-organization-prepare-their-children-for-holy-war/52072/

July 28, 2012

This thread is nothing without the best ever chicken song...

July 15, 2012

I don't like Frank Black. Black Francis, on the other hand...

I just find Frank Black's solo stuff a bit boring, but when it comes to the Pixies, I never get sick of listening to them. Especially this one...

July 15, 2012

Report that claims ‘there is no occupation’ presents an opportunity

What is behind the left’s anger at a government commission report that rejects the existence of the occupation? The report presents an opportunity to replace empty political rhetoric and legality with a focus on facts on the ground.


By Itamar Mann

The Israeli left responded with a mixture of laughter and rage to former Justice Edmond Levy’s report on the status of the West Bank and its claim that “there is no occupation.” One commentator particularly baffled was human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, who wrote that the “report was written in Wonderland, governed by the laws of absurdity.” Instead of the laws of absurdity, Sfard wants us to continue embracing the laws of war.

Such responses reflect confusion. Their underlying assumption is that claiming what is going on in the West Bank is not an occupation means morally accepting it. But even though the report fails to describe the domination of Palestinian life in the West Bank, that conclusion does not follow. Why, then, are so many of us, within Israel-Palestine and internationally, so attached to the occupation category?

One of the central arguments the report makes is that the West Bank is not occupied, because occupation is a temporary situation. Israeli control in the West Bank, on the other hand, has no end in sight. This argument sounds quite pernicious. It assumes that just because Israel took violent custody over this area, it gained rights to it. However, while it is true that 20th century international law has forbidden the acquisition of land by force, such movements from fact to norm are not unfamiliar to international lawyers.

A more constructive approach should embrace parts of the conclusions, instead of rejecting it wholesale. The strategic goal should be to point out what does follow logically from sovereignty over the West Bank. West Bank Palestinians must immediately be granted the right to citizenship and political participation. Not granting such rights would augment growing accusations of apartheid against Israel. Alongside possible investigations by the International Criminal Court, this would fuel the transnational movement for democracy in Israel-Palestine – which Israelis and Palestinians are of course part of.

The occupation paradigm has historically served Israeli governments to fend off criticism by pretending to negotiate, and this report sends a clear message to audiences abroad. The golden age of negotiation is long gone. Rather than waiting for a messianic conclusion to “peace talks,” pro-democracy citizens of the world must support likeminded Palestinians and Israelis right now.

http://972mag.com/the-opportunity-in-the-report-claiming-there-is-no-occupation/50690/


And for anyone else who can't keep up with what we're supposed to describe the occupation as without being accused of being antisemitic, wanting to destroy Israel, etc, here's something you might find amusing...

The name game: What should we call the situation in West Bank?

First they told us we can’t call it “apartheid”.

Now, they say we can’t call it “occupation”.

But we have to call it something!!!!!

I’m waiting to hear your suggestions in the comments section below. Single-word terms/nouns are preferred (with short explanations even better). I’ll post some of the good ones I get from Twitter and Facebook here, too.

http://972mag.com/the-name-game-what-should-we-call-the-situation-in-the-west-bank/50708/

June 22, 2012

'Snow White' still a bad apple of feminism

I got dragged along to see it night before last, and disliked it intensely coz every time I saw Chris Hemsworth, I kept on humming the theme to Home & Away (see pic below)




Anyway, back to Snow White....


Philosophical questions: 1. Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? And 2. Is a Snow White wearing a metal breastplate and brandishing a sword still Snow White?

"Snow White and the Huntsman"stampeded into theaters Friday to mixed — often fawning — reviews and a box-office-leading $56.3 million, but the movie has a fairly open relationship with the original Grimms' fairy story. Not because there are eight dwarfs instead of seven or because there's a random scene in which a Christlike stag magically turns into a cloud of butterflies. Those are the sorts of minor changes that nag at fangirls but are acceptable when spinning new versions of old stories.

But when Snow White storms a castle, and Snow White learns to fight, and Snow White (spoiler alert!) ends up choosing neither of her two male suitors, preferring to sit on a throne alone — well, perhaps we should at least call the girl Snow Whitish, or maybe Snow Ecru. Or just rename the altered product, "Princess on a Fast Horse, Also Tames Trolls."

Yay for feminism, yay for fight scenes, yay for girls who know better than to lie around waiting for a lover's kiss to wake them from a coma — because honestly, in modern times that scene looks like a date-rape PSA waiting to happen.

"It's a desire to do a role reversal," says Brian Sturm, a professor at the University of North Carolina who co-wrote the scholarly article, "We Said Feminist Fairy Tales, Not Fractured Fairy Tales!" It's a course correction — a way of acknowledging that misogyny in old bedtime stories should be put to sleep.


http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-04/entertainment/ct-ent-0605-fairytales-20120604_1_jack-zipes-feminist-fairy-tales-grimms

June 9, 2012

After an eight-year surgical journey 'everything is good'

Warning: this is a good news story. Those who like their news conflicty may not want to read any further.

EMAN Tabaza first came to Australia when she was eight for surgery to remove a bulging tumour behind her nose and forehead that left her feeling like an outcast at home in Gaza.

Craniofacial surgeon Tony Holmes led an eight-hour operation at the Royal Children's Hospital in 2004 to remove the tumour and rebuild Eman's face, giving her a new forehead and nose and moving her eye sockets closer together.

The difference to Eman's appearance was dramatic and she returned to Gaza a far happier girl, no longer taunted as ''the mother of all noses''.

<snip>

Two months after her facial surgery Eman is now due to return home to the Gaza Strip, having spent more than a year in Melbourne in the care of the Children First Foundation, which arranged her travel and medical treatment.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/after-an-eightyear-surgical-journey-everything-is-good-20120607-1zyt9.html#ixzz1xI8bXGYM

June 9, 2012

Why the Question of Palestine is a Feminist Concern

Note - because there's been some confusion at DU3 about where anything that mentions either Israelis or Palestinians should go (it's not like DU2 where it was all sent to the I/P forum), I thought I'd mention here that there's no restriction on posting anything about Israel, Palestine or the conflict anywhere but GD and one or two other forums

<snip>

I have been asked how I view the occupation of Palestine from my feminist perspective, or perhaps another way to put it, why and how I think the question of Palestine is a feminist concern. It seems to me that the question posed by the predicament of Palestinians is not merely the uncertainty of their future political fate as a people (a nation without a state, territory, and resources of its own, without capacities of self-determination). It is rather the question of the specific conditions of human devaluation and disposability to which they appear to be fated by a normalized system of exploitative inequality, dispossession and violence. That these conditions of devaluation and disposability depend on the maintenance of naturalized hierarchies of human difference (race, ethnicity, nationality, religion) will undoubtedly resonate with feminist analyses of forms of gendered devaluation, disposability and violence that obtain in many socio-historical contexts, including this one. It is also the case, however, that beyond any homologies, which this theoretical resonance might suggest (eg. between racialized and gendered forms of devaluation and disposability), the projects of settler colonialism and apartheid nationalism that the Israeli state embodies and the logic of security which undergirds and legitimates its policies of surveillance, militarization and war have long been feminist concerns. Feminist analyses have shown how such projects are enabled and upheld not only by normative cultural ideals of gender and sexuality embedded in their constitutive conceptions of land, territory, sovereignty, people/race, citizenship, freedom and power. As modes of producing and regulating life – indeed, as projects that see to the uneven distribution of life-chances (the augmentation of life-chances of some at the cost of the reduction of life-chances of others), like and in tandem with capitalism – the projects of settler colonialism and apartheid nationalism also require divisions of labor and forms of social reproduction (and social death) that are profoundly gendered and racialized in ways that exceed the dominant form of political antagonism.




http://thefeministwire.com/2012/01/why-the-question-of-palestine-is-a-feminist-concern/