How Not To Think About Violence Against Women

By Noopur Tiwari

Source: Kafila.org

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

As Chief Spence Starves, Canadians Awaken From Idleness And Remember Their Roots - Naomi Klein

By Naomi Klein

Source: The Globe and Mail

Thursday, December 27, 2012

I woke up just past midnight with a bolt. My six-month-old son was crying. He has a cold – the second of his short life–and his blocked nose frightens him. I was about to get up when he started snoring again. I, on the other hand, was wide awake.

A single thought entered my head: Chief Theresa Spence is hungry. Actually it wasn’t a thought. It was a feeling. The feeling of hunger. Lying in my dark room, I pictured the chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation lying on a pile of blankets in her teepee across from Parliament Hill, entering day 14 of her hunger strike.

I had of course been following Chief Spence’s protest and her demand to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss the plight of her people and his demolition of treaty rights through omnibus legislation. I had worried about her. Supported her. Helped circulate the petitions. But now, before the distancing filters of light and reason had a chance to intervene, I felt her. The determination behind her hunger. The radicality of choosing this time of year, a time of so much stuffing – mouths, birds, stockings – to say: I am hungry. My people are hungry. So many people are hungry and homeless. Your new laws will only lead to more of this misery. Can we talk about it like human beings?

Lying there, I imagined another resolve too – Prime Minister Harper’s. Telling himself: I will not meet with her. I will not cave in to her. I will not be forced to do anything. More: http://www.zcommunications.org/as-chief-spence-starves-canadians-awaken-from-idleness-and-remember-their-roots-by-naomi-klein

Iceland Was Right, We Were Wrong: The IMF

By Jeff Neilson

Source: thestreet.com

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

For approximately three years, our governments, the banking cabal, and the Corporate Media have assured us that they knew the appropriate approach for fixing the economies that they had previously crippled with their own mismanagement. We were told that the key was to stomp on the Little People with “austerity” in order to continue making full interest payments to the Bond Parasites — at any/all costs.

Following three years of this continuous, uninterrupted failure, Greece has already defaulted on 75% of its debts, and its economy is totally destroyed. The UK, Spain and Italy are all plummeting downward in suicide-spirals, where the more austerity these sadistic governments inflict upon their own people the worse their debt/deficit problems get. Ireland and Portugal are nearly in the same position.

Now in what may be the greatest economic “mea culpa” in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine troika has been wrong all along. They have been forced to acknowledge that Iceland’s approach to economic triage was the correct approach right from the beginning.

What was Iceland’s approach? To do the exact opposite of everything the bankers running our own economies told us to do. The bankers (naturally) told us that we needed to bail out the criminal Big Banks, at taxpayer expense (they were Too Big To Fail). Iceland gave the banksters nothing.

More: http://www.zcommunications.org/iceland-was-right-we-were-wrong-the-imf-by-jeff-neilson

True Believer: Petraeus and the Mythology of Afghanistan

By Gareth Porter

Source: Truthout

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

This is the conclusion of a four-part series, "How Petraeus Created the Myth of His Success." Read Part One, "How the Myth Began - Petraeus in Mosul," Part Two, "How Petraeus Quietly Stoked the Fires of Sectarian War Without Getting Burned," and Part Three, "Petraeus Rising: Managing the "War of Perceptions" in Iraq."

Managing the "war of perceptions" in Afghanistan ultimately proved more difficult for David Petraeus than it had in Iraq.

As the raids were increased by orders of magnitude, the number of civilian casualties also exploded. From May 2010 to February 2011, SOF teams fired shots in 1,256 raids out of a total of 6,282 raids, killing 2,844 "insurgents," according to data released by ISAF. But with rare exceptions, night raids target a single individual in their homes only, so those figures indicate that as many as 1,500 people killed in the raids were civilians who had not been targeted.

The targeting was based on intelligence that was so deeply flawed that the SOF killed a former Taliban who had become a human rights investigator working with the European Union in the firm conviction that he was in fact the Taliban's shadow government for Takhar Province - merely because the man's cell number showed up on the list of those with whom the real shadow governor had been in contact. The intelligence officials deciding who should be targeted had not bothered to make the most obvious inquiries to check their cockeyed theory that the two were one and same man.

A high proportion of the targets of raids were simply people whose cell phone numbers showed up in the US surveillance system because of contact with someone else suspected of being an insurgent. As he had done in Mosul in 2003, Petraeus authorized a huge increase in the relatively less violent "cordon and knock" raids on only the thinnest evidence of connection with the insurgency, as well as raids targeting individuals identified as Taliban officers which involved killing the men in their beds next to their wives.

More: http://www.zcommunications.org/true-believer-petraeus-and-the-mythology-of-afghanistan-by-gareth-porter

Scapegoat Gaza:

Scapegoat Gaza: Netanyahu Shelled "Open Air Prison" / Egyptian Policy toward Israel Not Changed / U.S. Alliance Renewed with Radical Muslim Brotherhood

By Gilbert Achcar and David Goessmann

Source: Kontext

Sunday, December 23, 2012

The Climate Deal Sham: Only Sharing can Break the Deadlock

By Adam Parsons

Source: Share The World's Resources

Monday, December 24, 2012

The latest round of climate negotiations in Doha once again demonstrated the sheer lack of cooperation, goodwill and willingness - or ability - of the world's governments to share responsibility for tackling climate change. Since the epochal failure to reach a global deal at Copenhagen in 2009, less and less attention is paid by the media and the general public to these byzantine and shadowy UN climate talks. After three years of further wrangling by governments with little to show, it required serious scrutiny from ordinary citizens to determine what was actually being agreed upon at COP18. Was it merely an agreement to make an agreement in 2015? An agreement based on emissions cuts and pledges for funding that will remain inadequate and far too late to deal with the climate chaos that is already upon us? And one that won't come into effect, in any case, until 2020?

As usual there was no shortage of analysis pointing out the growing gap between evidence of global warming and action to tackle its causes and consequences. Dozens more reports were published that highlighted the dangers of sustained inaction, not least UNEP's Emissions Gap report that argued it will be impossible to cap global warming at 2 degrees Celsius if present trends continue - thus making it unfeasible to wait until 2020 to begin stringent emissions reductions. There was were even dire predictions about future climate breakdown from within the corridors of power, not least from the International Energy Agency, the CIA, a multinational business consultancy (PwC), and - with the worst prognostications of all - the World Bank.

These alarm bells from the establishment were accompanied by first-hand evidence of an already climate damaged planet, with 2012 marked by extreme weather events and climatic disasters across large parts of the world. This included the flash melting of Greenland's surface ice; historic droughts in Russia, Australia and the US; dramatic flooding in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand and China; and of course the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, as well as Typhoon Bopha that fatefully struck the Philippines as COP18 delegates were in mid-negotiation. Just as the climate talks got underway, the Global Climate Risk Index revealed that many of the worst natural disasters of last year were also the most severe ever experienced by those countries affected. Less developed countries remain generally more affected than industrialised nations, the Index reported, while the overwhelming majority of disaster-related deaths are in the developing world.

More: http://www.zcommunications.org/the-climate-deal-sham-only-sharing-can-break-the-deadlock-by-adam-parsons

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-climate-deal-sham-only-sharing-can-break-the-deadlock-by-adam-parsons

HooHa: Finally, A Few Bankers Face Criminal Prosecutions For Conspiracies

By Danny Schechter

Monday, December 24, 2012

How can we feed the world—today and tomorrow?

Connection to the Land Cannot Not Be Broken

By Joshua Brollier

Source: Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Gaza City-Yesterday in al-Faraheen, Gaza, Israeli Occupation Forces shot and wounded an unarmed 22 year old farmer, Mohammed Qdeih, from behind. Mohamed and nine others went out to their fields in the early afternoon, walking approximately 250 meters from the Israeli border. Within minutes, two heavily armed Israeli military jeeps rushed to the security fence. They issued a warning for the farmers and residents to leave the area and shortly thereafter the Palestinians, intimidated by the heavy military presence, began to head back to the village of Abasan. The soldiers were not satisfied and opened fire, piercing Mohamed’s right arm from the backside. Israeli forces continued to shoot rounds of live ammunition while Mohamed and the others frantically evacuated and waited for an ambulance. Another young Palestinian, 19, was shot yesterday near the border in Jabaliya.

Under the siege, Israeli “closed military zones” have confiscated up to 35 per cent of Gaza’s arable land, which was previously used for fruit and olive orchards, wheat and various vegetables. With nearly half of Gaza’s population designated as “food insecure” by UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the farming industry having been crippled from the inability to export products under the Israeli blockade, this land is essential for the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and residents of Gaza. Even so and given that four Palestinians have been killed and over 50 injured since the November 21st, 2012 ceasefire agreement, one might ask why anyone would risk their life and venture near the border at all.

Palestinians have had varying experiences near the fence. There have been some successes with farming and some incidents resulting in death and serious injuries. The agreement between Israel and Hamas clearly stated that Israeli forces would “refrain from targeting residents in the border areas” and to “stop all hostilities in the Gaza Strip land, sea and air including incursions and targeting of individuals.” Hamas and other factions have held up their end of the bargain with not a single rocket being fired from Gaza.

As a participant in an international solidarity team, I sat down this with Mohammed Qdeih and family members this afternoon to get their perspective on the breach of the ceasefire and why they would risk their lives in pursuit of reclaiming their land. “The ceasefire is without any sense,” said Mohammed. “They attempted to kill me.” Mohammed is single but works the land to help provide for his 15 extended family members who reside together in Abasan al-Kabir. The family has approximately ten dunams of land which fall in the vaguely defined “buffer zone.” He is one of only five who are able to work in the fields and now the family will be without his help for a month at best.

More: http://www.zcommunications.org/connection-to-the-land-cannot-not-be-broken-by-joshua-brollier

Indigenous ‘Idle No More' Movement Sweeps Canada

By Rachael Petersen

Source: Global Voices

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Thousands of people across Canada mobilized Monday, 10 December 2012 under the banner “Idle No More” to protest the effects of current and proposed government policies on the nation’s indigenous peoples.

While it has received little mainstream media attention, Idle No More has capitalized on social media networks to spread information about the widespread rallies, protests, and roadblocks, causing the hashtag#idlenomore to trend on Twitter in Canada this week.

The rallies -which continue to take place in major cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Calgary- are the broadest expressions of discontent from First Nations that Canada has seen in years. The movement has been deemed by some as “Native Winter,” in the style of the “Arab Spring” revolutionary wave that overtook the Middle East beginning in December 2010.

In one of the more high-profile actions of the Idle No More movement, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a hunger strike on Tuesday which she plans to continue until President Stephen Harper and Queen Elizabeth II agree to a treaty meeting with First Nations Leaders.

More: http://www.zcommunications.org/indigenous-idle-no-more-movement-sweeps-canada-by-rachael-petersen