Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
A former leader of American Jewish Congress has strongly condemned Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, saying “the Zionist dream is based on slaughter of innocents.” Henry Siegman, now President of the US/Middle East Project, spoke recently on Democracy Now on the need to end the occupation and grant sovereignty to the Palestinian People to end this conflict.
To achieve justice and peace in Israel, its popular portrayal as the victim of Palestinian aggression must be replaced with the state accepting responsibility in its role as a colonial power with all the attendant political, military, and financial hegemony. As an occupying power, they must protect the civilian population, and their actions must be proportional and measured towards perceived injustice, granting rights and self determination to the Palestinian people. Otherwise, war, death, hatred, and instability will continue. Essay by Ajamu Baraka with two films by John Pilger.
The government of Honduras plans the creation of neoliberal free-market enclaves, unaccountable to national laws and governed by foreign corporate interests. Stipulated for territory inhabited by Garifuna people and campesino farming communities, with propaganda about democracy, economic innovation and humanitarian justice, “President” Pepe Lobo should first refrain from presiding over the coup-backed “illegitimate regime.”
Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, “The Battle of Algiers,” as a study of the brutality of urban guerrilla warfare, serves an Arab-street-level counterpoint to Kathryn Bigelow’s US-imperialism-centered, torture-driven war propaganda film, “Zero Dark Thirty.”
Free marketeers and Libertarians advocate for the world’s first Charter City, with authoritarian governance, facilitated by a military coup, coordinated using political sway with business partners, using public funds from the IDB for infrastructure plans, and built on land “purchased” from indigenous communities, small farmers and the state of Honduras.