Tagged: racism

New Zealand Journalist’s Indecent Slur on Indian Chief Minister

Article first published as New Zealand Journalist’s Indecent Slur on Indian Chief Minister on Technorati.

Racism is still standing on strong roots around the world it seems. Several numbers of human rights’ organisations, international anti-racism promoting organisations and equality laws are there in the world, but are not able to curb the inhuman, indecent and vulgar attitudes of the vulgar people, even among the intellectual world.

paul_henry Adding Insult to Injury

Paul Henry, who hosts the Breakfast show on state-owned broadcaster TVNZ, has deliberately mispronounced the name of the Delhi Chief Minister Ms. Sheila Dikshit even after he was told by the lead anchor that it was pronounced like “Dixit.” Adding insult to the injury the racial protagonist Paul Henry went on to say, “her name is so appropriate because she is Indian.”

Adding more insult, the particular clip was promoted on the Video Extras section of TVNZ’s website under the tag “Paul Henry laughs about the name Dikshit.” After receiving at least four complaints about the clip, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald on its website a day ago, the clip has been removed now.

Racial Vulgarity

Henry went on to produce his racial vulgarity ridiculing the New Zealand’s Indo-Fijian Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand right in the conversation with New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key. Paul Henry asked the Prime Minister whether Anand was a New Zealander or not, and whether the PM was going to pick someone who looked more like a New Zealander next time.

Turkish leader calls on Berlin to sack central bank official over racism

Deutsche Welle | 28.08.2010

Sarrazin Chairman of Germany’s Turkish Federation, Kenan Kolat, called for central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin to be removed from his post after fresh comments criticizing Muslims in Germany. "I am calling upon the government to begin a procedure to remove Thilo Sarrazin from the board of the central bank," Kolat told the German daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau on Saturday, August 28. In his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" ("Germany does away with itself"), Sarrazin claims that members of Germany’s Muslim community pose a danger to German society. Sarrazin, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD) and Berlin’s former finance chief, was reported in June as saying that members of the Turkish and Arab community were making Germany "more stupid." With his book, Kolat said, Sarrazin had overstepped a boundary. "It is the climax of a new intellectual racism and it damages Germany’s reputation abroad," Kolat said.

High birth-rates

In a serialization of the forthcoming book in the German popular daily newspaper Bild, Sarrazin said that Germany’s Muslim community had profited from social welfare payments far more than they contributed, and that higher birth-rates among immigrants could lead to the Muslim population overtaking the "indigenous" one in terms of numbers. Merkel’s chief spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Wednesday that many people would find the remarks "offensive" and "defamatory," adding that the chancellor was concerned. Members of the SPD have distanced themselves from Sarrazin’s comments, while Germany’s Green and Left parties have called for his removal from the central bank’s board. A Bundesbank spokesman said that Sarrazin’s latest remarks were personal opinions, unconnected with his role on the board.

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Australia condemns Indian student death 

Reuters | Sydney | Mon Jan 4, 2010 | 8:19am IST

Australia condemned on Monday the killing of an Indian student in Melbourne, as India called for an end to the spate of attacks against Indian students which has damaged Australia’s multi-million dollar foreign student sector. Accounting graduate Nitin Garg, 21, originally from the state of Punjab in northern India, was stabbed to death on Saturday night on his way to a job at a fast food outlet in Melbourne. Police said the motive for the attack, which they described as vicious, was not known. Indian media have labelled the series of attacks against Indian students in Australia as racist, but police and the Australian government have said the attacks are purely criminal. “I obviously unreservedly condemn this attack,” said Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard. “This is a nation that welcomes international students. We want to make them welcome, this is a welcoming and accepting country,” Gillard told reporters on Monday.

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna on Sunday issued a statement condemning the “brutal attack,” with Indian media reporting him warning the attacks were creating “deep anger” in India and could have a “bearing on bilateral ties.” “There is extreme shock and fear and anger,” Gautam Gupta, president of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia, told local radio on Monday. Australia’s international student sector is the country’s third largest export earner, behind coal and iron ore, totalling Aus $13 billion ($11.7 billion, Rs. 5440.5 Cr) in      Continue reading →

India student killing by Australians condemned 

BBC NEWS | 2010/01/04 | 05:02:25 GMT

Mr Garg was working at a fast food restaurant

The governments of India and Australia have condemned the killing of an Indian student in the Australian city of Melbourne on Saturday night. Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna urged the Australian authorities to “speedily book” the people responsible for the killing of Nitin Garg. Mr. Garg was stabbed to death on his way to a fast food restaurant in Melbourne. There have been a number of attacks on Indian students in Australia in the past year. Australian police blamed the attacks on opportunistic criminals, but some Indian students see them as racist. The attacks have caused outrage in India and prompted Australian PM Kevin Rudd to reassure the Indian government that Australia is not a racist country. Melbourne police said that the motive for the latest attack on Mr. Garg, 21, an accounting graduate from the northern Indian state of Punjab, was not known.

‘Deep anger’

Mr. Krishna said the attack was “highly condemnable.” He said the Australian government should realise such attacks were making public opinion in India “polarised.” He said Australian authorities should take note of the “deep anger” caused by such attacks, and their possible effect on bilateral ties. Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has also condemned the attack. “This is a nation that welcomes international students. We want to make them welcome, this is a welcoming and accepting country,” Ms Gillard was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.     Continue reading →

Palestinian grassroots organizer arrested during Israeli military night raid

Press release, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, 10 December 2009

As part of a recent escalation of political arrests in the West Bank village of Bilin, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a school teacher and coordinator of the Bilin Popular Committee, was arrested by Israeli soldiers.

At exactly 2am last night, seven Israeli military jeeps pulled over at Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s residence in the city of Ramallah. Soldiers raided the house and arrested Abu Rahmah from his bed in the presence of his wife and children. Abu Rahmah is a high school teacher in the Latin Patriarchate School in Birzeit near Ramallah and is the coordinator of the Bilin Popular Committee against the wall and settlements. A previous raid targeting Abu Rahmah was executed with such exceptional violence on 15 September 2009 that a soldier was subsequently indicted for assault.

Abu Rahmah’s arrest is part of an escalation in the Israeli military’s attempts to break the spirit of the people of Bilin, their popular leadership and the popular struggle as a whole — aimed at crushing demonstrations against the wall. Recently, advocate Gaby Lasky, who represents many of Bilin’s detainees, was informed by the military prosecution that the army intends to use legal measures as a means of ending the demonstrations.     Continue reading →

Israel approves new homes near Jerusalem, defies U.S. 

Reuters | Tue Nov 17, 2009 | 11:38pm IST

Defying the United States, Israel approved on Tuesday the building of 900 homes for Jews on West Bank land it occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed to its Jerusalem municipality. The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said President Barack Obama’s envoy, George Mitchell, had asked an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a meeting in London on Monday, to block the proposed construction at the settlement of Gilo. But a government planning commission approved the addition of 900 housing units at Gilo, where 40,000 Israelis already live. Israel rejects the international description of Gilo as a settlement and says it is a neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the city it claims as its capital. The commission’s decision seemed likely to strengthen the Palestinians’ determination not to resume peace talks until settlement expansion is halted. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev declined comment on the Yedioth Ahronoth report, which said Netanyahu’s negotiator had rejected Mitchell’s request. Regev repeated Israel’s refusal to include areas it annexed to Jerusalem as part of any accommodation of Obama’s calls for “restraint” in West Bank settlement growth. A spokesman for Nir Barkat, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, issued a statement that seemed to confirm the report, saying the mayor “strongly objects to the American demand to halt construction in Jerusalem.” It was not immediately clear when construction work on the new homes in Gilo would begin. Some 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, also captured in 1967, among 2.7 million Palestinians. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war, a move that was not recognised internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.         Continue reading →

ISRAEL-PALESTINE — Time for a bi-national state

The following article was published in renowned International Magazine ‘Le Monde Deplomatique’ which is printed in French and English mainly. Recently it began its editions in few other languages. It is well known for its unbiased dealing with the subject in question. It mainly concentrates on International political and financial affairs. Though the present article came in March 2007 issue, in view of its importance in the context of recent developments I’m reproducing it here for this blog’s readers.

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LEILA FARSAKH | Le Monde diplomatique | March 2007

Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas may have affirmed that they want a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but it may be more promising to return to a much older idea.

THERE is talk once again of a one-state bi-national solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The Oslo peace
process failed to bring Palestinians their independence and the withdrawal from Gaza has not created a basis for a democratic Palestinian state as President George Bush had imagined: the Palestinians are watching their territory being fragmented into South African-style Bantustans with poverty levels of over 75%. The area is heading to the abyss of an apartheid state system rather than to a viable two-state solution, let alone peace (1).

There have been a number of recent publications proposing a one-state solution as the only alternative to the current impasse. Three years ago, Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor in the 1970s, wrote that the question is “no longer whether there is to be a bi-national state in Palestine-Israel, but which model to choose” (2). Respected intellectuals on all sides, including the late Edward Said; the Arab Israeli    Continue reading →

South African Team Visits Israel occupied town of WB ‘Nablus’ – Report 

Gideon Levy | Haaretz.com | Sun, November 08, 2009 | Israel Time: 13:18 (EST+7)

Twilight Zone / ‘Worse than apartheid’

I thought they would feel right at home in the alleys of Balata refugee camp, the Casbah and the Hawara checkpoint. But they said there is no comparison: for them the Israeli occupation regime is worse than anything they knew under apartheid. This week, 21 human rights activists from South Africa visited Israel. Among them were members of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress; at least one of them took part in the armed struggle and at least two were jailed. There were two South African Supreme Court judges, a former deputy minister, and members of Parliament, attorneys, writers and journalists. Blacks and whites, about half of them Jews who today are in conflict with attitudes of the conservative Jewish community in their country. Some of them have been here before; for others it was their first visit.

For five days, they paid an unconventional visit to Israel – without Sderot, the IDF and the Foreign Ministry but with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and a meeting with Supreme Court President Justice Dorit Beinisch. They spent most of their time in the occupied areas, where hardly any official guests go – places that are also shunned by most Israelis.

On Monday, they visited Nablus, the most imprisoned city in the West Bank. From Hawara to the Casbah, from the Casbah to Balata, from    Continue reading →

Israel rejects UN’s endorsement of Gaza war report 

IANS | Fri, Nov 6 | 08:24 PM

Tel Aviv Friday deplored a UN resolution backing the Goldstone report that investigated human rights violations during the brief war between Israeli forces and Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip early this year. The UN resolution suggests if either of the two sides fails to launch a credible investigation, then the matter should be submitted to the Security Council, Xinhua reported. Israel has denied any violation of international humanitarian laws. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) had appointed a former South African judge Richard Goldstone to investigate any possible human rights violations during the 22-day war in December and January in the Gaza Strip. After a debate, majority of the 192-member UN General Assembly voted in favour of an unbinding resolution that calls upon both Israel and the Palestinians to conduct ‘independent and credible’ investigations into alleged war crimes.

In response, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement ‘Israel rejects the UN resolution which is completely detached from the ground realities it faces.’ The ministry also said it had the right for self-defence and would continue to act to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. Israel said it launched the offensive in response to eight years of continuous rocket fire from Gaza. At least 1,400 people were killed in the fighting. While defying international pressure for an inquiry based on the Goldstone report, Israel said it has been conducting its own investigation into a number of civilian deaths and other incidents during the Gaza war, including some listed in the report.

Israel rations Palestinians to trickle of water: Amnesty International 

WW4 | Tue, 27/10/2009 | 02:19

Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies. These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there. “Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT. In a new extensive report [“Troubled Waters: Palestinians denied fair access to water”], Amnesty International revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water. Israel uses more than 80% of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 percent. The Mountain Aquifer is the only source for water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan River.     Continue reading →

Israeli Arab backlash over covert police unit 

Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent | Thenational.ae | October 18. 2009 11:15PM UAE / October 18. 2009 7:15PM GMT

NAZARETH, ISRAEL // Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs. It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens that were adopted long ago in the occupied territories, where soldiers were regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians. According to David Cohen, the national police commissioner, the unit was established two years ago after an assessment that there was “no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community”. Mr. Cohen said that, in addition, undercover agents had been operating in East Jerusalem for several years to track potential terrorists. Israel’s Arab leaders denounced the move as confirmation that the Arab minority was still regarded by the police as “an enemy” – a criticism made by a state commission of inquiry after police shot dead 13 unarmed Arab demonstrators inside Israel and wounded hundreds more at the start of the second intifada in 2000. In a letter of protest to Israeli officials last week, Adalah, a legal rights group, warned that the unit’s creation violated the constitutional rights of the Arab minority and risked introducing “racial profiling” into Israeli policing.

Although the police claim that only Arab criminals are being targeted, Arab leaders believe the unit is an expansion of police efforts to collect information on political activists, escalating what they call a “climate of fear” being fostered by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. Awad Abdel Fattah, the general secretary of the National Democratic Assembly, whose members are regularly interrogated by the police even though the party is represented in the national parliament, said there was strong evidence that undercover units had been operating in Arab communities for many years. “The question is, why are the police revealing this information now? I suspect it is designed to intimidate people, making them fear    Continue reading →

From Recent History…

[picapp src=”8/e/9/d/Israeli_Forces_Move_b3bd.jpg?adImageId=4877124&imageId=2580420″ width=”500″ height=”348″ /]

May 21 2003

BEIT HANOUN, GAZA STRIP – MAY 21: A Palestinian boy prepares to hurl stones at Israeli tanks May 21, 2003 in Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip. New Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas cancelled a visit to the northern Gaza town after Israeli forces reentered the town they had seized last week. Residents said that Israeli troops, who pulled to the outskirts of the town May 20, 2003, had demolished 15 houses, uprooted thousands of trees and damaged the water and sewage systems. Abbas was to tour the town to assess damages from Israeli forces five-day invasion. (Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images)

THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY (a must read) 

Edward S. Herman | www.gtr5.com

The previous two articles in this series pointed up the extremely racist and abusive character of Israeli policy toward Arabs, and the simultaneous virtually unconditional U.S. support for Israel and enormous pro-Israel (and anti-Arab) bias of the mainstream media and intelligentsia. There is considerable dispute over the reasons for this bias and policy tilt. The two most prominent explanations are Israel’s strategic value to the U.S. and the power of the pro-Israel lobby; others include western guilt and sympathy for the Jewish people as a result of the holocaust, and anti-Arab racism. I will review briefly these alternative explanations, but will devote most attention to the power of the lobby, which I consider of primary importance.

Western Guilt

As an explanation of western support for Israel, guilt over the holocaust and sympathy with the victim people is a non-starter. Guilt rarely if ever affects national policy, which is almost always grounded in more earthy considerations. Concern over the holocaust victims never extended so far as to allow significant numbers of Jewish survivors to emigrate to the U.S. after World War II, nor did it lead to extensive prosecutions of the holocaust managers and beneficiaries. Large numbers of these, including major death merchants, were protected and put to use in the Cold War. The question may also be raised, why should there be such guilt related to the holocaust and neither to black slavery and subsequent discrimination against blacks, nor to the destruction of the indigenous Indians? And why shouldn’t there be guilt over western connivance in the expulsion of Palestinians from their homelands and victimization in 27 years of occupation? Guilt, in short, is easily managed, and can be brought into play effectively by those powerful enough to mobilize it for their own purposes.

Anti-Arab Racism

Another possible source of the bias against the Palestinians is racism. This factor is more important than “guilt,” but I don’t think it deserves heavy weight either. Palestinian racial types are variable and overlap with those of Jews. There is also great variability in Palestinian culture, much of it overlapping with that of    Continue reading →

How facts are filtered for American Media to produce Lies?

Here is a 7 and 1/2 minute (roughly) video which depicts how news, particularly those of Palestine – Israel conflict are thoroughly filtered in favour of Israel to control the way the Americans look at Israel. With such a hate campaign for decades would certainly make the people believe what ever is said for Israel or to simply remain ignorant to what ever they here or see. We can see an Israeli politician saying “We are in conflict with Palestine…. being involved in PR is crucial to win the conflict…” and so on. We can see graphical explanation of how the news of conflict is filtered through different phases to produce hate campaign against those who talk against Israel regime’s horrible killings and attacks on ordinary civilians of Palestine. And we can see more…

Courtesy: Isiria blog on wordpress.

Carter says Obama row is ‘racist’

BBC NEWS | 2009/09/16 09:19:53 GMT
Former US President Jimmy Carter says much of the vitriol against President Barack Obama’s health reforms and spending plans is “based on racism”.Mr Carter told a public meeting there was “an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president”.Republican lawmaker Joe Wilson was rebuked on Tuesday in a House vote. He shouted “You lie!” while Mr Obama was delivering an address on healthcare to Congress last Wednesday.The House resolution of disapproval described it as “a breach of decorum”. But Mr Wilson’s eldest son, Alan, has denied racism was a factor in his father’s outburst.Some conservatives have accused the president’s supporters of playing the race card.

‘Abominable’

Angry town hall meetings and a recent taxpayers’ demonstration in Washington have been vitriolic towards the president, reports the BBC’s North America editor Mark Mardell.Many have not just protested against the president’s policies but have accused him of tyranny, and have promised to “reclaim America”.”Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national    Continue reading →