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.
1021
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.
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
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.”
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.
Police used smoke and tear gas to enforce a curfew on protesters early on the morning of August 17 in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed black teenager was killed by police on August 9, Morning Star Online said the next day.
Seven people were arrested during the night. Campaign group More claimed that all seven were arrested after being “dragged out of cars, some parked in their own driveways”.
Former British prime minister, and current United Nations’ Middle East “peace envoy”, Tony Blair has an insatiable appetite for cuddling up to despots and tyrants. This time it is Egypt's dictator, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, responsible for the mass murder of more than 1000 peaceful demonstrators.
The Thai military marked its second month in power by unilaterally imposing an Interim Charter giving the military chieftain heading up the junta, euphemistically named the “National Council for Peace and Order” (NCPO), the power to issue any decree to “preserve public peace and order”.
Hideous. Sadistic. Vicious. Murderous. That is how veteran academic and author Noam Chomsky describes Israel’s month-long offensive in Gaza that killed at least 2000 people and left almost 10,000 injured.
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.
- Page 1
- Next page