December 18, 2023

The Swedish-funded Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank largely destroyed by Israel, staff taken

https://www.svd.se/a/wAqEdo/frihetsteatern-i-jenin-till-stora-delar-forstord



translated:

On Wednesday, the Swedish Friends Association received the news that the Freedom Theatre in Jenin's refugee camp has been largely destroyed and that its management has been taken by Israeli military forces. Three young members of the theatre have been killed in recent weeks, according to information on the theatre's social media (X and Facebook) accounts. Parts of the premises will now instead be used by the Israeli military as a communications center.

Since its inception in 2006, the Freedom Theatre has been supported by leading Swedish theatre artists and financed by Swedish governmental aid. The Freedom Theatre has been an important gathering place, especially for children and young people from the refugee camp and also has been an important part of the Palestinian cultural resistance to the occupation. Friends of the Freedom Theatre is a Swedish association with the aim of supporting the theatre financially, informing about its activities and arranging exchanges and collaborations. Now the alarm is being raised that there is an extensive Israeli military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, one that has been described as worse than the year 2002, when nearly 50 Palestinians were killed and large parts of the refugee camp were left in ruins.

Abed Zbeidi, who sits on the theatre's board, tells Friends of the Freedom Theatre that it is not possible to get in or out of the refugee camp. Ranin Odeh, who is a theatre educator and usually works with children and women in the theatre, describes how the military entered her apartment and smashed furnishings and used their windows to shoot at people outside.

Odeh says that she and her family were accused of being Hamas sympathizers and when they denied this they were told that "you are all Hamas and you will all meet the same fate". According to the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who writes for Haaretz newspaper, roads, sewers and many buildings are now demolished in the Jenin refugee camp. Levy says the devastation in Jenin's refugee camp increasingly resembles that in Gaza.

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Svenska Dagbladet (The Swedish Daily News), abbreviated SvD, is a major (one of our 4 national daily newspapers) newspaper published here in Stockholm.

Today (December 18th) is its 139th anniversary.

December 16, 2023

France to ban far-right Catholic group for 'legitimising violence'

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has announced that he intends to disband Academia Christiana, a movement of far-right traditionalist Catholics that he accuses of justifying and inciting violence.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20231211-france-to-ban-far-right-catholic-group-academia-christiana-for-legitimising-violence



Darmanin, whose ministry has already banned several other groups deemed dangerous, said in an interview with online magazine Brut on Sunday that he would seek the dissolution of Academia Christiana "in the coming weeks". The group "repeatedly legitimises physical violence and the use of arms", an interior ministry source told Le Parisien newspaper. "It uses the vocabulary of war and explicitly encourages its supporters to arm themselves and go on a crusade."



Founded in 2013, Academia Christiana presents itself as a training institute in the fields of spirituality, morality, education and sport. It is led by Victor Aubert, a professor of French and philosophy at the Institute Croix des Vents in Sées, a private school directed by the traditionalist Catholic society Fraternité Sacerdotale Saint-Pierre (Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter).

"They are apologists for anti-Semitism. They are big supporters of collaboration and Pétain. This does not, in our opinion, correspond to the values of the French Republic," Darmanin told TV interviewers on Monday. In response to the government's move to dissolve it, Academia Christiana accused the authorities of treating Catholics as second-class citizens, claiming an attempt to "prohibit any thought or reflection outside of secular and consumerist ideology".



The organisation says it will challenge its planned dissolution before the Council of State, France's top administrative court, which has been called to examine several of the interior ministry's other orders to disband.

snip

December 16, 2023

Chopin - Complete Nocturnes

Piano: Artem Tenkeli, Born in Moscow, Russia, now in NYC

December 16, 2023

Empire of the Sun - Standing on The Shore (La Tronix Remix) & (Lifelike Remix) 2009

Label: EMI – none
Format: 2 x File, AAC, Single, 256 kbps
Country: Australia & New Zealand
Released: 12 Jun 2009
Genre: Electronic, Pop, Rock
Style: New Wave, Electro, House

December 16, 2023

Meta's Threads app launches across EU in blow to competitor X

The tech giant’s app, which launched in July 2023, first needed approval from the European Commission over privacy provisions

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/14/threads-launches-europe-meta-twitter



Threads launched in the European Union on Thursday, further expanding the Meta-owned platform’s user base and dealing another blow to competitor Twitter/X. Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the launch in a post on Threads. Threads, known as a “Twitter killer” app, launched in July 2023 and was immediately available in the US and more than 100 other countries, including the UK. However, its debut on the continent lagged due to strict privacy laws in the region.

Before launching in the EU, Meta first needed to seek approval from the European Commission over the app’s privacy provisions. Many speculated the delay was due to the EU Digital Markets Act, which addresses a variety of big tech antitrust and privacy concerns – including sharing content across platforms. Meta did not specifically cite the act as the reason for the delay, but the Instagram executive Adam Mosseri said: “The complexities with complying with some of the laws coming into effect next year are significant.”

Creating an account on Threads requires users to have an Instagram account. In other markets, users were at first unable to delete their Threads account without deleting their linked Instagram account. Meta changed the setting in November. However, with Thursday’s launch, Meta is giving users the option to browse Threads without creating a profile on the app or on Instagram.

“People who use Threads without a profile can browse content on Threads, search for accounts, share content via link copying or platform sharing, and report Threads content, but can’t create a post or interact with content,” Meta said in a blogpost announcing the change. Threads launched in July 2023 and quickly amassed more than 100 million users in its first week. The platform has since seen a large drop off in active users, but Zuckerberg in earnings calls has remained steadfast that the platform would eventually reach its goal of 1 billion users.

snip

December 15, 2023

US family of 11-year-old shot by police vows to seek justice after officer gets no charges

Aderrien Murry, who is Black, was wounded by police after calling 911, and authorities declined to charge the officer involved

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/15/aderrien-murry-police-shot-911-family-vows-fight-justice



The family of an 11-year-old boy who was shot by police after he called 911 and asked for their help have vowed to continue to fight for justice after authorities declined to charge the officer involved. Aderrien Murry, who is Black, was seriously wounded by police after his mother asked him to call the police when the father of one of his half-siblings became angry. They were at their home in Indianola, Mississippi.

When police arrived, Murry was shot in the chest by Sgt Greg Capers after police ordered everyone in the house to put their hands up. Murry had emerged running from around a corner and headed for the door, according to relatives. His injuries included a collapsed lung, fractured rib and lacerated liver. “We are committed to seeking justice for Aderrien and his family, and we will persist in our efforts to ensure accountability through the civil legal process,” the family’s lawyer Carlos Moore said in a statement to NPR.

On Thursday a grand jury decided there was no criminal conduct by Capers in the case. The office of Lynn Fitch, the attorney general, said it would therefore not press any charges. “As such, no further criminal action will be taken by this office in this matter,” Fitch said in a statement.

Murry’s family have launched a $5m federal lawsuit against the city and two police officers, accusing the police department of poor training and supervision of its officers, reckless disregard and gross negligence. The family – and the lawsuit – have repeatedly asked for police body-camera footage of the incident to be released though the police department has not yet done so.

snip

December 15, 2023

Corruption in New York's Redistricting Plans

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-12-15-corruption-new-york-redistricting/



Progressives and Democrats were cheered last week when New York state’s highest court tossed out the 2022 congressional district map and ordered the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to draw a new one. A fairer map could flip as many as five seats back to Democratic. But what sort of Democrat? In New York’s 16th District, a nasty primary fight is brewing between incumbent Congressman Jamaal Bowman, an African American progressive, and Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who is white and centrist.

Before the 2022 redistricting, more of Bowman’s district was in the Bronx, which is heavily Black and Latino. Now, most of the seat is in affluent, largely white Westchester County. Following Bowman’s criticism of Israel’s policy in Gaza and the West Bank, the Israel lobby in the form of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recruited Latimer to challenge Bowman and promised him scads of money. And Latimer is not shy about pointing out how the new district map will determine the winner. In an interview with the publication City & State, Latimer said that if the new district should include more of the Bronx and less of Westchester County, he’s “not gonna win that race.”

And here’s where the plot thickens. Latimer has a fat thumb on the scale. The chair of the Independent Redistricting Commission is Latimer’s own deputy county executive, Ken Jenkins. If Latimer wins the seat, Jenkins would move up to county executive. He’d be the first African American to hold the post. The New York Working Families Party, a strong backer of Bowman, has issued a demand that Jenkins recuse himself. But unless the power of public opinion shames Jenkins into stepping aside, it’s not clear who if anyone has the power to remove him.

And it gets worse. Jenkins was appointed to the post by the state Senate president, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who is also from Westchester. Stewart-Cousins is a close ally of Latimer and Jenkins, and is the first African American woman to lead the Senate. So don’t expect her to ask Jenkins to step aside. Redistricting is all about horse trading. Other members of the commission will want changes in other districts and they need to corral votes. It is unlikely that they would cross Chairman Jenkins on the map of the Bowman seat.

snip

December 15, 2023

Condition U.S. Aid to Israel on a Modicum of Israeli Realism

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-12-14-condition-us-aid-israel-netanyahu/



For more than 30 years, the official policy of the American government (with some deviation during the Trump presidency) has been to support and promote a two-state solution to the problem of Israel-Palestine. The Oslo Accords, which established a process by which a viable and independent Palestinian state could be established alongside Israel, was one of the genuine achievements of Bill Clinton’s presidency. But for a right-wing Israeli’s assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who championed the accords, they might have led to something like a durable peace or at least a modus vivendi in that vexed land.

Neither the Israeli far right nor the Palestinian extremists ever accepted Oslo; each favors a religiously homogenous regime that runs from the river to the sea. The Israeli far right now dominates Israel’s government, and that government’s leader, Bibi Netanyahu, is now more explicit than he’s ever been that no Palestinian state will ever be established. Down in the polls—very down in the polls—after having Hamas’s October 7 murder raid occur on his watch and after refusing to accept any responsibility for having had that happen, Bibi plainly hopes his extreme anti-Palestinian posture will at least win him back the support of the Israeli right. As Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea noted in the centrist newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, “He failed as Mr. Security and he failed as Mr. America. Maybe he’ll succeed as Mr. Never Palestine.”

Which raises a question for the Biden administration and the United States more generally: Why should we support Israel so long as its policy is fundamentally at odds with ours, and with our general support for legitimate national aspirations? Why should we continue to give it aid? Why should we continue to veto United Nations resolutions premised on promoting two-state solutions?

I don’t regard such a shift in policy as anti-Israel; I regard it as a necessary form of tough love. Plainly, Israel’s policy of opposing a Palestinian state has not worked, as numerous acts of terrorism, two intifadas, and the October 7 raid have made all too bloodily clear. There’s no reason whatever to believe that it will work going forward. To the contrary, were Israel to accept a viable Palestine on the West Bank, it’s clear that its leading Arab neighbors, most particularly Saudi Arabia, would normalize relations with it, and the global “Kick Me” sign that Israel has affixed to its butt could be removed. (Some kicks would surely continue, due partly to the endurance of antisemitism, but they’d be fewer in number.) Such an accord would require Israel to relinquish a number of its West Bank settlements, but the majority of Israelis (those who live within the nation’s Green Line accepted borders), having experienced the rule of the settler and ultra-Orthodox extremists in Bibi’s Cabinet, don’t appear all that keen on forfeiting their lives and livelihoods to the demands of those zealots.

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December 14, 2023

UK bans entry for those responsible for settler violence against Palestinians

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-bans-entry-those-responsible-settler-violence-against-palestinians-2023-12-14/



LONDON, Dec 14 (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Thursday that those responsible for settler violence against Palestinians would be banned from entering Britain, following a similar plan by the European Union.

U.N. figures show daily settler attacks in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have more than doubled since the Palestinian militant group Hamas's deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel from Gaza.

"Extremist settlers, by targeting and killing Palestinian civilians, are undermining security and stability for both Israelis and Palestinians," Cameron said on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.

"Israel must take stronger action to stop settler violence and hold the perpetrators accountable. We are banning those responsible for settler violence from entering the UK to make sure our country cannot be a home for people who commit these intimidating acts."

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https://twitter.com/ashoswai/status/1712792570856718847

December 14, 2023

Toni Basil - Mickey (BBC Special + Official - 1981) ReMastered

Label: Radialchoice – VSX 1148, Virgin – VSX 1148
Format: Vinyl, 12", Single, Limited Edition, 45 RPM
Country: Canada
Released: 1981
Genre: Electronic, Rock, Pop
Style: Synth-pop