Category Archives: Genocide

It's still true: you can't eat money

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.” – Cree Saying. This quote, possibly the biggest cliché in the environmental literature, inspired Jared Diamond’s seminal work “Collapse“. But humans seem to succumb to boredom fairly quickly, so [...]

Do as we say, not as we do, the new model of Democracy Inc.

Not long ago, in a country far away, the world held its breath as a tightly-fought election drew to its climax. The popular democratic candidate appeared to have won, but at the last minute, 25 key votes from the electoral college of a state run by the candidate’s brother assured victory for the son of [...]

Israel lobby victorious as BBC refuses to help with humanitarian appeal

In a display of lip-curling spinelessness, the BBC has refused to air the non-aligned Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Humanitarian Aid to the victims of the Gaza conflict. Other UK (commercial) TV channels, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, have agreed to air the appeal. Sky Television is considering its position. (UPDATE: unsurprisingly, Sky has [...]

Mission accomplished as Israel announces truce in Gaza

  Having reached all ‘the goals of the war, and beyond’ Israeli President Olmert trumpeted a unilateral truce to commence at 00.00 am today, having been told to stop killing so many civilians by the US on Friday, ahead of Obama’s inauguration and with enough dead and wounded Palestinians to ensure election victory. The calculation [...]

Bloodshed and Diplomacy in Gaza: Where will it end?

Nothing from me about Gaza, but I trust the judgement of my friends at The Economist who, even though they are not allowed into Gaza, know plenty of people who are. I am a good friend of one of the people who wrote this piece. Like me, the piece conjectures that Israeli politicians are having second [...]

I know nothing at first hand about Gaza so I should stop commenting . . . . . . .

. . .and it would be a good idea if other people did the same. However, I do know a bit about media. It is pointless of Israel to complain about the possible bias of quoted ‘sources in Gaza’ from the world’s news gatherers if they employ totalitarian tactics (selectively used by the US in [...]

Iraqi civilian daily death toll returns to pre-surge levels

“We don’t do body counts” – General Tommy Franks Apart from the grim news of 23 people dead at a Sunni meeting four days ago, followed by over 40 deaths at a Shia shrine on 4 January, there are ominous signs that rumours of a peaceful withdrawal from Iraq are sadly exaggerated. Iraq Bodycount, the [...]

Once in Royal David's City

By Daniel Taghioff In the season of goodwill, I am reminded of the story of Jesus’s birth by the nativity plays in my daughter’s deeply Christian School. He was born in a stable because all of those that would now be termed “Palestinian” were called home to be counted. So the ironies, as ever, pile [...]

Jerusalem Post reports 'no international pressure to end op' (Gaza ethnic cleansing)

“After all, who remembers the Armenians?” (Adolph Hitler). By John J Kelly. Israel is feeling “no real pressure” from the world to end the operation in the Gaza Strip, and the amount of time the international community will sit relatively quietly on the sidelines depends on how things develop, senior diplomatic officials said Sunday. According [...]

UN Resolution 446 revisited and another Neo-coincidence

The US and its ‘allies’ pursued an aggressive ‘war’ counter to the 4th Geneva Convention against Iraq on the spurious justification that Iraq had ignored a UN resolution. Israel is in breach of more than 65 UN Resolutions, but the most significant, Resolution 446, passed in 1979 with abstensions from the UK, Norway and the [...]