Israeli attack on Gaza was “massive state terror”: former UN official

As a brutal winter storm hits Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians remain without proper shelter after Israel’s summer attacks, a former United Nations official warns of a “humanitarian emergency of the highest order.”

“The evidence seems overwhelming as to the commission of massive war crimes,” former UN special rapporteur Richard Falk told The Electronic Intifada.

Yet justice is as out of reach for Palestinians in Gaza as relief from the dire humanitarian situation there.

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israeli-attack-gaza-was-massive-state-terror-former-un-official

Why I am not Charlie

This crime in Paris does not suspend my political or ethical judgment, or persuade me that scatologically smearing a marginal minority’s identity and beliefs is a reasonable thing to do. Yet this means rejecting the only authorized reaction to the atrocity. Oddly, this peer pressure seems to gear up exclusively where Islam’s involved. When a racist bombed a chapter of a US civil rights organization this week, the media didn’t insist I give to the NAACP in solidarity.

When a rabid Islamophobic rightist killed 77 Norwegians in 2011, most of them at a political party’s youth camp, I didn’t notice many #IAmNorway hashtags, or impassioned calls to join the Norwegian Labor Party. But Islam is there for us, it unites us against Islam. Only cowards or traitors turn down membership in the Charlie club.The demand to join, endorse, agree is all about crowding us into a herd where no one is permitted to cavil or condemn: an indifferent mob, where differing from one another is Thoughtcrime, while indifference to the pain of others beyond the pale is compulsory.

http://paper-bird.net/2015/01/09/why-i-am-not-charlie/

Media obsesses over ‘free speech’ in Charlie Hebdo case ...

...while ignoring Israeli targeting of journalists

The story of the January 7 2015 storming of the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French publication with a history of racist, anti-Muslim caricatures, has inundated the Western media. The attack, tragically leaving at least 12 dead, has been touted as a “free speech” issue by the first government in the world to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

(This framing has distorted the fact that it was torture at Abu Ghraib and the US war on Iraq that left 100,000s of civilians dead, not cartoons, that radicalized the impoverished shooters, sons of émigrés from Algeria, a country that was a French colony until the end of a bloody war of independence in 1962.) -

Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaeda attacked Satirists in Paris

(Juan Cole)
The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.

The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion.

French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the post-war period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html

prepared to lose more of whatever liberties we have left.

The slaughter of 12 innocents in Paris (justifiably) receives universal condemnation,

while the slaughter of 2000 innocents in Gaza, provokes barely a murmur.

Raif Badawi: Saudi Arabia publicly flogged liberal blogger and activist accused of 'insulting Islam'

Source: The Independent UK

Saudi Arabia has been condemned for publicly flogging liberal blogger and activist Raif Badawi, who was accused of insulting Islam.

Amnesty International confirmed to The Independent that Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, received the first round of 50 in a public flogging after Friday prayers, which it says continue every Friday for 20 weeks.

A witness told the human rights organisation that Badawi was removed from a bus in shackles and taken to a public square in front of the al-Jafali mosque in Jeddah. He was then flogged in front of a crowd and security guards for 15 minutes, before being put back on the bus and driven away.

Amnesty says Badawi, who started the "Free Saudi Liberals" website, was arrested in June 2012 for creating an online forum for public debate and over accusations that he insulted Islam. His website has also been shut down.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/raif-badawi-saudi-arabia-urged-to-halt-flogging-of-liberal-blogger-sentenced-to-1000-lashes-9967008.html

Art Spiegelman, legendary cartoonist, On Democracy Now, talks about the French massacre,

his book, "In the Shadow of No Towers", and cartooning in America.
He says the only publication in American which would publish his "No Towers" was The Daily Forward -
which I am trying to find online.
Fascinating talk. Guess I should have been an admirer of his a long time ago, but I wasn't.
He says as a youth he had his nose in Mad Magazine.
makes sense.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/1/8/cartoonists_lives_matter_art_spiegelman_responds

EI: "Watch: Military indoctrination of Israeli youth “starts in kindergarten”

Last month, dozens of alumni and former staff members of an elite Jerusalem high school stated their refusal to serve in the Israeli military, and called on future graduates of the Israel Arts and Sciences Academy to reject the draft.

“Refusing to serve in the Israeli military is not an easy choice, but a moral stance against a collective mood manifested in racism and violence on every street these days,” the refusers’ letter states.

“It is a choice to withstand the pressure coming from one’s home, friends, professional environment and the media, and to not take part in the crimes done in our name.”

“The military serves as an enabler to a separation-regime based on the notion of an ethnic superiority of Jews over Palestinians,” the letter adds.

“Today, after the most recent massacre in Gaza, a horror committed in our name against nearly two million people – half of whom are children and teenagers – we choose not to remain silent,” the letter says.

One of the signers, activist and composer Amit Gilutz, was interviewed on RT by Abby Martin this week.

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-military-indoctrination-israeli-youth-starts-kindergarten

Mall of America is threatening to prosecute Black Lives Matter organizers - petition

I don't usually sign petitions nor ask others to, but please consider signing:

You may have seen the Black Lives Matter protest at the "Mall of America".

"Now, an overzealous prosecutor who has deep ties to the Mall of America is threatening criminal charges against a few of us she thinks are “organizers”, in an ill-conceived effort to try and force us to pay tens of thousands of dollars of restitution for “the Mall’s lost revenue” and “police overtime”.

https://action.sumofus.org/a/moarestitution/3/3/?akid=8892.264786.wIj-qk&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=1