on media manipulation and the coup in honduras

i’m still catching up on work and news while i was away at summer camp. one of the important developments was the military coup in hondoruas. john pilger was on democracy now! with amy goodman while i was away discussing this coup as well as the way the u.s. responded to honduras in comparison to [...]

on meddling and hypocrisy in iran

i’ve been reading the selected writings of eqbal ahmad this week. there are some excellent, insightful essays about palestinian politics and resistance strategies in this volume, which are especially interesting given ahmad’s history–as someone who lived in algeria and tunisia during the algerian revolution that kicked out the french colonists and although he was born [...]

on the lebanese elections, or a parliament of civil partition

so big surprise. march 14th/mutaqbal won the lebanese elections. my friends in lebanon either boycotted the elections or they voted for march 8th/opposition. while in many ways this is a big disappointment, in other ways there is a silver lining as my dear friend rami pointed out: the looming economic crisis created by sa’ad hariri [...]

hillary’s love of war criminals

tamara sent me this photograph earlier because she thought it looked like shimon peres and hillary clinton just got married (sans the white dress of course). actually, i was thinking something was going on with tzipi livni and hillary because i saw them holding hands on al jazeera today. they looked very happy together. i [...]

striking against ethnic cleansing

so apparently there is a strike today in the west bank. i found out about it only minutes after i got out of my pjs ready to go on with my day. i had a tawjihi class in balata refugee camp and then i was supposed to go to ramallah for a hip hop concert [...]

i want tulkarem to be my valentine

in an article in electronic intifada the other day, the always politically astute ali abunimah offered his assessment of the rising fascism in the zionist entity:
Yisrael Beitenu’s manifesto was that 1.5 million Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel (indigenous survivors or descendants of the Palestinian majority ethnically cleansed in 1948 ) be subjected to a loyalty [...]

the bomb & the ballot & the boycott

my friend omar sent out an email with his assessment of the israeli elections yesterday. i think it is quite smart and apt. he lays out the reality of the situation in spite of the media–even al jazeera–using ridiculous words like “hardline” or “ultra nationalist” or “center” to describe the extreme racist and fascist political [...]

democracy?

by the most basic definition of democracy, the israeli terrorist state is not one:
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives
here’s a hint: a state cannot be both jewish and democratic. it is an oxymoron. most of the news here right now [...]

some notes on censorship

it is kind of astounding what an impact an najah university has on the city of nablus. the city itself is one of the largest in palestine and yet when the students are not here so many shops and restaurants close down because there is no business. one of the board of trustees at the [...]

back to school in nablus & gaza

i started classes in earnest today. last week was the drop/add week for students so no one shows up for class. but today i had my first classes; not one of my students is male! not yet anyway. i will see tomorrow if i have the same demographics in my classes. there are very few [...]