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San Francisco Bay Area activists have not allowed a vessel from Israel’s largest shipping company to unload in the Oakland Port for four consecutive mornings. On August 19, at 6:45am, activists declared yet another victory against the Zim Line, which has been trying to make its way into Oakland since August 16. Lara Kiswani, the executive director of the local Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), told The Electronic Intifada that they are now waiting to hear if the Zim Line will leave the Port of Oakland today with the cargo it brought.
Argentina came out swinging on August 13 against the US judge overseeing its debt default case. The Argentine government said it would not agree to restart discussions with the vulture funds anytime soon as the stalemate over Argentina's debt continues. Argentina also slammed the US District Court Judge Thomas Griesa, who said on August 8 he would fine Argentina in contempt of court unless Argentina stopped claiming it had met its obligations and was not in default. Argentine Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said: “The proper conditions do not exist to negotiate.”
Israel uses cinema to shore up its carefully manufactured international image as an enlightened “beacon of democracy in the Middle East” – a world away from the fanaticism of the settlements, the separation wall, the checkpoints, and the siege and butchery of Gaza. Film festivals like the Israeli Film Festival are an attempt to culture-wash Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. The goal is for the international public to see Israel as a civilised country committed to peaceful, artistic pursuits – not as the warmongering power oppressing an entire people, that it really is.
After Brown killing, LAPD shoot another Black man dead Just two days after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 25-year-old Ezell Ford was shot by Los Angeles Police Department officers in South Central Los Angeles, teleSUR English said on August 13. Officers came to the scene of West 65th and Broadway on the night of August 11 to conduct “an investigative stop”. Witnesses say that Ford was complying with police and lying on the ground when he was shot in the back.
Since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by an unidentified police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, the majority Black city just outside of St Louis has been rocked by protests against a system that sees the lives of young Black men as disposable. The response of authorities has been to flood the town with hundreds of police from dozens of neighbouring cities and towns, decked out in riot gear, and armed with assault weapons, attack dogs and militarised vehicles for "crowd control".
United States: Working-class and left electoral politics back on the radar? The US political system, so highly polarised between conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats, has experienced in the last year some interesting changes on the left-hand margin of the national political scene, Dan Botz writes. Israel and the coming Arab revolution
The Coral Battleground Judith Wright Spinifex, 2014 203 pages, $29.95 (pb) From the days when Captain Cook’s Endeavour tangled with the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, humans had learned to fear the Reef with its “treacherous waters and weather”. But now the reef “should fear us more”, writes Judith Wright in The Coral Battleground. It is a reprint of her 1977 account of the campaign to save the largest and most spectacular marine coral ecosystem in the world from oil drilling.
United States: Don’t drink Ohio’s water “The aquapocalypse in Toledo, Ohio is now entering its third day after citizens in the greater Toledo area woke up to a stark reality on Saturday morning when city officials had issued an unprecedented, region wide water advisory warning people not to drink or boil local tap water due to toxic contamination,” said an August 4 Counterpunch article.
I am proud to join more than 250 Jewish holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors in condemning the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Our statement of solidarity (published below) calls for "An immediate end to the siege against Gaza" and a"full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel". We believe that "never again", the often-repeated lesson of Hitler's holocaust, "must mean never again for anyone!" -- especially the Palestinians.
Venezuela sent its first batch of aid to Palestine on August 12, teleSUR English said. As well as government aid, Venezuela's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has collected food, medicines and clothes from a supportive population, seeking to ease the suffering of the people of Gaza. Venezuela Analysis reported on August 14 that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he would convene a meeting of Arab leaders to coordinate reconstruction efforts for the war-torn Gaza Strip.
United States planes have launched air strikes in Iraq again. The war in Ukraine is reaching a bloody outcome as the Kiev government crushes the rebellion in the east of the country. A top US general was killed in a supposedly safe base in Afghanistan, and the Taliban overran Sangin province, where many British soldiers were killed. A Royal Navy ship was dispatched to Libya to rescue British citizens as the embassy closed due to fierce fighting between militias. Israel restarted its brutal assault on Gaza and the death toll of Palestinians reached nearly 2000.
All it took was a recording of Donald Sterling insulting Magic Johnson in a derogatory manner for the 24-hour news world to stop on its axis. Now imagine if Donald Sterling ― in all of his paranoid, racist fervour ― had an army at his disposal and bombed Magic Johnson in his home, killing him in his sleep. If such a scenario sounds like hacky Phillip K Dick fan fiction as written by Mike Lupica, then you have not been paying attention to the dystopian, genocidal panorama in Gaza, where no one is safe. You are unfamiliar with the name Ahed Zaqout.