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421 International scholars and cultural figures are pledging not to serve on juries or prize committees or in academic hiring consultations in Germany whenever there are "convincing indicators that their decisions may be subject to ideological or political interference or litmus tests."
« On the Day of Palestinian Struggle, 15 May, the anniversary of the establishment of the illegitimate Zionist entity in occupied Palestine. We publish for the first time the expanded list of names of Palestinian, Arab and international associations and institutions that have signed on the statement of Palestinian youth and student organizations, which called for the overthrow of the program of the so-called "Palestinian leadership" in the Palestinian Authority that has confiscated the PLO. This statement comes to announce the launch of an effort, based on cooperative principles and joint struggle, to establish an organized Palestinian national platform in the diaspora based on the participation of popular and mass organizations, civil society groups and individuals, to contribute to a revolutionary movement for change to revive the Palestinian national movement, to leave behind the shackles of the Oslo era and to restore the revolutionary path to liberation and return. »
In response to the Coronavirus global pandemic, governments across the world are enacting emergency measures in order to protect the health of their citizens and stabilize their economies. However, 1.8 million Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip appear to be on the precipice of catastrophe — and the Israeli government, which controls what goes in and out of Gaza, has a responsibility to act now. Palestinians in Gaza must now weather the Coronavirus in addition to the punishing, 15-year-long Israeli blockade of the coastal enclave. The international community must do everything it can to protect everyone in the world from this pandemic — and this must include the stateless Palestinians in Gaza, whose lives are controlled by the Israeli military. The Israeli government must live up to its legal obligations as an occupying power by providing Palestinians with the medical supplies they need to survive this pandemic.
While many parts of the world transition to mandatory lockdown, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory face uncertainty about how they will be protected from the spread of COVID-19. This blog will focus on the circumstances of three particularly vulnerable population groups: i) the population of Gaza, ii) child and adult detainees in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, and iii) families and individuals displaced by home demolitions.
Abstract: This article discusses the global campaigns for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, which frame their objectives primarily in legal terms, as well as the transnational strategy to suppress BDS campaigns by means of the law. After arguing that the strategy to suppress BDS campaigns by means of the law exemplifies an instrumentalisation of law that is fundamentally at odds with the rule of law, I discuss two landmark judgments that recognised a right to boycott, and demonstrate that what is ultimately at stake in these judgments is the right to participate in politics. I then analyse the various concepts of politics exemplified by the campaigns for BDS. Reflecting on the relationship between BDS, law, and politics in a global context, I pose the question how law might facilitate emancipatory and transformative politics across the boundaries of the nation-state.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is gaining momentum. There is no doubt about this. The Palestinian-led campaign for an educational, cultural and business boycott of Israel aims to get justice, freedom and equality. Inspired by the South African anti-Apartheid movement, BDS started in 2005 by civil society and governments to take action to put pressure on Israel to comply with international law, mainly by ending its prolonged military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land. BDS is, by its nature, a non-violent form of resistance. Nevertheless, Israelis believe it to be an existential threat which wants to delegitimise their state's existence.
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israel sees the international boycott campaign as an existential threat to the Jewish state. Palestinians regard it as their last resort.
Endorsed by: Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees; Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions; Palestinian NGO Network, West Bank; Teachers' Federation; Palestinian Writers' Federation; Palestinian League of Artists; Palestinian Journalists' Federation; General Union of Palestinian Women; Palestinian Lawyers' Association; and tens of other Palestinian federations, associations, and civil society organizations.
For decades, Israeli universities have played a key role in planning, implementing and justifying Israel's occupation and apartheid policies, while maintaining a uniquely close relationship with the Israeli military. To end this complicity in Israel's violations of international law, Palestinian civil society has called for an academic boycott of complicit Israeli academic institutions. Refusing to normalize oppression, many academic associations, student governments and unions as well as thousands of international academics now support the academic boycott of Israel.
How we got here - Why Israel - Academic Freedom in Palestine and Israel - Why Boycott - Reasons not to Boycott - Moving On.
Israel's academic community cannot be allowed to proceed as if it has nothing to do with the destruction of Palestinian society, including its academy and academic freedom. Given their direct and indirect complicity in this criminal process, the placing of temporary limits on the freedom of 9000 Israeli academics is a necessary price that must be paid in the struggle to restore the fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians.
Like Judith Butler, many Jewish academics in Israel and the diaspora have adopted and supported the Palestinian call for an academic boycott. These academics are joined by rapidly growing numbers of Jews in South Africa and globally who support an academic boycott, including 'Jewish Voice for Peace', an American organisation with close to 100 000 members, the Israeli organisation 'Boycott from Within,' as well as Jewish organisations in Europe, Britain, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa.
Fearing backlash from boycott movement, association of mental health researchers walks back decision to hold confab in Jerusalem.
Terreuraanslagen en de kwestie-Palestina hangen met elkaar samen. Het plan-Kushner is de laatste nagel in de doodskist van een tweestatenoplossing. De alternatieven zijn apartheid of etnische zuivering. Annexatie van de Westelijke Jordaanoever overschrijdt een Europese rode lijn. Media, politieke wetenschappers en intellectuelen kunnen het verschil maken..
In a historic vote, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies BRISMES) joins a growing number of academic associations refusing to be complicit in Israel's grave violations of international law. We warmly salute the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) for voting overwhelmingly to support the Palestinian call for a boycott of complicit Israeli academic institutions.Notice on the DBRISMES website (June 27): "The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) has not endorsed the academic boycott of Israeli Institutions as advocated by BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). There was an indicative vote of the membership held at the Annual General Meeting. The majority of those attending voted in favour of the boycott. This vote is not binding on the Society. The Society's position on BDS remains that which was endorsed at the 2015 Annual General meeting."
The Palestinian Union of Social Workers and Psychologists (PUWP)
Heightened restrictions on Birzeit University's right to hire and maintain international faculty persist into the 2019-2020 academic year. Israel has escalated what can only be understood as a policy whose ultimate goal is the elimination of any international faculty presence at Palestinian universities. Our 14,800 students returned to classes on 4 September with a third of their international faculty missing, the Israeli authorities having denied them entry or forced their departure by refusing them any viable means to stay in the country or return. The status of international faculty able to make it to campus remains extremely precarious; 60% have lapsed or only short-term visas due to expire before the end of the first semester. In short, except for a handful of instructorsunder foreign government fellowships or programs, all of our international faculty currently in the country are under constant threat of deportation.
According to data collected by Right to Education, a grassroots campaign aimed at defending education in Palestine, Israeli forces have detained at least 64 university students since the start of this year. A spokesperson at Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners' rights organization, told +972 that Israel has been targeting an increasing number of Palestinian students since the start of 2019. There are currently 260 Palestinian high school and university students in Israeli prisons. Of the 18 Birzeit students who were arrested in August, Israel has released only three.
Committee says refusal to grant visas to guest lecturers is not in its purview. Hundreds of academics ask top officials to match guidelines at West Bank institutions to those at Israeli ones.
While the denial of visas to international scholars might seem a small inconvenience by comparison, put into the context of the overall weakened conditions of Palestinian schools and universities, as well as the totality of deprivation the Palestinians suffer under, it is a terrible thing indeed. The international community, especially the international academic community, needs to wake up.
Why should Israeli professors and students care that their country is subverting the academic freedom of Palestinian universities and interfering with their hiring of foreign lecturers? This routine Israeli interference with the ordinary life of Palestinian universities doesn't interest presidents, faculty deans or senior lecturers of Israeli universities, nor their student population. Their voices are not heard despite the fact that the meddling of the Interior Ministry and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories in granting visas to academics and students headed for the Palestinian enclaves began long ago, and has only exacerbated over the last three years.
Short-term tourist visas and refusals to extend them are routine obstacles, but the West Bank's Birzeit University is now fighting back... Israel's scholasticide policies are clearly driven by "the desire to weaken our institutions and destroy the Palestinian future. When they fight against the quality of the Palestinian academic institution, they're weakening our future".
Birzeit University, Adalah, Al-Haq are now fighting to end escalating discriminatory Israeli policy aimed at preventing international academics from staying in the West Bank and refusing to renew visas for those with teaching contracts. In a letter sent on 30 April 2019 to Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, Israeli Chief Military Advocate General Sharon Afek, and the Israeli military's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Kamil Abu Rokon, Birzeit University, Al-Haq, and Adalah demand that Israel: lift the restrictions preventing international academics employed by Birzeit University from staying and working in the West Bank; refrain from imposing arbitrary restrictions on the duration of stay or extension of stay for international academics; order the publication of a clear and lawful procedure for issuing entry visas and work permits for international academics in the West Bank, which will enable the university to manage and maintain its academic freedom. Adalah Deputy General Director Attorney Sawsan Zaher, who drafted the letter to Israeli authorities, said: "Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – like all other peoples around the world – are entitled to exercise their right to academic freedom as part of their right to self-determination. The Israeli military occupation cannot prevent Palestinians from exercising this right". Indeed, according to the interpretation applied to Article 43 of the Hague Regulations of 1907, sovereignty of education does not change hands - it is inalienable - and must remain in the hands of the occupied Palestinian population.
Israel is isolating Palestinian universities by forcing international scholars to leave their academic positions in the occupied West Bank. Two Palestinian human rights groups, as well as Birzeit University, are calling on Israel to lift restrictions preventing international academics from working in the West Bank and to publish "a clear and lawful procedure for issuing entry visas and work permits." Israel's policy of denying internationals entry to the West Bank, as well as refusing and failing to process visa extension applications in a timely manner, has affected dozens of scholars working at Palestinian universities.
Birzeit, which has ranked within the top three percent of universities worldwide, is fighting back. The highly acclaimed university, hand in hand with legal rights groups Adalah and Al-Haq, is "demanding an immediate halt to this policy targeting Palestinian academic freedom and isolating Palestinian institutions of higher learning," the groups said in a press release on Thursday. "Blocking our right to engage international academics is part of an ongoing effort by the Israeli occupation to marginalize Palestinian institutions of higher education," Birzeit University President Abdullatif Abuhijleh said in a statement. "The latest escalation in visa restrictions is just one in a longstanding and systematic Israeli policy of undermining the independence and viability of Palestinian higher education institutions."
"Monsieur le Recteur, Au nom des signataires de la présente lettre je vous fais part d'un appel à bien vouloir entendre et diffuser le plus largement possible le cri d'alarme émanant de l'Université de Birzeit,...".
"Geachte Rectoren, In naam van de ondergetekenden sturen wij u een oproep om aan de noodkreet vanuit de Palestijnse Birzeit Universiteit gehoor en weerklank te geven en een krachtig signaal uit te sturen tegen het feit dat de Israëlische autoriteiten de universiteiten en hogescholen in de Bezette Palestijnse Gebieden steeds verder internationaal isoleren en aldus de academische vrijheid van onze collega's beknotten...."
"Dear President, On behalf of the endorsers of this letter, we would like to urge you to access and disseminate as widely as possible the urgent call from Birzeit University, and to send a strong signal against the alarming academic isolation imposed by the Israeli authorities on Palestinian universities in the Occupied Territories."
Israeli occupation forces seized at least 23 people from their homes on Monday morning, 26 August, including several Palestinian student leaders and activists at Bir Zeit University. They join approximately 60 fellow students at Bir Zeit and over 300 Palestinian students overall held in Israeli prisons. Student activists involved in the elected council or other organizations are particularly targeted for arrest, interrogation and imprisonment; nearly every year, the Bir Zeit student body president is seized by occupation forces and prevented from carrying out his or her term on campus.
De BDS-beweging voor Palestijnse rechten veroordeelt in de meest krachtige bewoordingen de opkomende racistische en fascistische groeperingen in Duitsland en in heel Europa. Onze geweldloze beweging verzet zich principieel tegen alle vormen van racisme en rassendiscriminatie, waaronder antisemitisme en islamofobie.
In een open brief aan vice-eersteminister en minister van Ontwikkelingssamenwerking Alexander De Croo klagen academici en kunstenaars het gebrek aan actie aan tegen de wanpraktijken van de Israëlische bezetter tegen schoolgaande Palestijnse kinderen.
After being announced shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2017, the "Plan" (modestly called "the Vision") supposed to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was made public on January 28th. It is therefore now possible to analyse its substance in detail, deepening the reflections that have already been made on the basis of the leaks of some of its aspects... In the preamble of the "Plan", a position is taken which results in the exclusion of the whole of international law, as derived from UN resolutions and a range of other texts, as the essential basis for establishing the parameters of the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Understanding the 'conflict' as a settler colonial struggle allows us to build a holistic path toward a liberated society for Palestinians and Israelis.
A UN Security Council resolution rejecting South Africa's 1983 constitution shows that there is precedent and necessity to act against Israel's Nation-State Law.
The inauguration of a supposed ancient Jewish 'Pilgrimage Road' by Ambassador David Friedman and White House envoy Jason Greenblatt is a reminder that archeology is never as neutral as some would like to believe.
Route closures in West Bank villages have long since become a routine method of oppression used by Israel against West Bank residents. For example, when allegations are made that young men from some Palestinian village had thrown stones or Molotov cocktails at Israeli vehicles on local roads, the military punishes the entire population of that and nearby villages by closing the gates it had installed at their entrances over the years. Even when open, the very fact that the gates are there serves as a constant reminder that Palestinians' freedom of movement is entirely subject to arbitrary Israeli decisions made in complete disregard for the needs of the residents.
The repercussions of the attack are still felt keenly by Palestinians in Hebron, who have seen their rights eroded and their formerly bustling city centre turn into a ghost town.
Hamdi Talib Nasan, père de quatre enfants, a été tué d'une balle dans le dos lors d'un raid des colons dans le village cisjordanien d'al-Mughayyir. Encore une fois, l'armée israélienne à proximité n'a rien fait pour protéger les Palestiniens.
One of the most insidious aspects of Israel's military occupation is also one of its most overlooked: its deliberate fragmentation of Palestinian society. While the spectacle of violence is typically the focus of media attention – when international media cover Israel's oppression of Palestinians at all – the reach of Israeli control over Palestinian family life falls under the radar.
Village residents, like most Palestinians living under the occupation, rightly feel there is no one to defend them and no one to secure their property.
Palestinian residents of a West Bank village are being targeted by hate crimes coming from two nearby Jewish outposts.
The Israeli trainer and his Qatari and Egyptian assistants throw a few bones, and the caged animal in Gaza surrenders.
The permit system for Palestinians allows Israel to recruit informants, suppress political activity, and create an opaque system of segregation and control. Just don't say it's about security, says Yael Berda. The image should be familiar to every person with even the slightest bit of knowledge about Palestine.
Na het bloedbad van 30 maart 2018 in Gaza door scherpschutters van het Israëlische leger, richten academici, kunstenaars en vertegenwoordigers van de culturele sectoren, verenigd in de Belgische Campagne voor de Academische en Culturele Boycot van Israël (BACBI), een oproep tot de Belgische regering en de EU tot krachtig protest en tot de bevolking om de BDS-boycotcampagne te versterken.
The Report presents overwhelming evidence of the prolonged and unlawful victimization of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, which has intensified greatly since Israel imposed a land, sea, and air blockade in 2007. This unlawful and comprehensive block-ade has entrapped the Gazan people ever since it was established is a particularly severe and cruel form of collective punishment, which is a flagrant and continuing criminal wrong. Introduction by Richard Falk.
As Othman Hiles began climbing the Gaza fence, an Israeli soldier opened fire and killed the unarmed boy. The soldier's sentence? Community service.
"The bomber pilot didn't know. His commanders who gave him the orders also didn't know. The defense minister and the commander in chief didn't know. Nor did the commander of the air force. The intelligence officers who aimed at the target didn't know. The army spokesman who lied without a qualm also didn't know. None of our heroes knew. The ones who always know everything suddenly didn't know. The ones who can track down the son of a wanted man in a Damascus suburb didn't know that sleeping inside their miserable hovel in Dir al-Balah was an impoverished family. They, who serve in the most moral army and the most advanced intelligence services in the world, didn't know that the flimsy tin shack had long since stopped being part of the "Islamic Jihad infrastructure," and it's doubtful that it ever was. They didn't know and they didn't bother to check — after all, what's the worst that could happen? Reporter Yaniv Kubovich revealed the shocking truth on Friday on the Haaretz website : The target had not been re-examined for at least one year prior to the strike, the individual who was supposedly its target never existed and the intelligence was based on rumors. The bomb was dropped anyway. The result: eight bodies in colorful shrouds, some of them horrifically tiny, all in a row; members of a single extended family, the Asoarkas, five of them children — including two infants."
The Ministry of Social Development in the Gaza Strip said in a report that the 2019 poverty rate in the enclave is the highest in the world. On the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, celebrated on Oct. 17, the Ministry's undersecretary, Ghazi Hamad, said that poverty and unemployment rates have reached nearly 75 percent in 2019.
The only way Israelis can be made to sit up and take note of the disaster unfolding next door in Gaza, it seems, is when they fear the fallout may spill out of the tiny coastal enclave and engulf them too. Environmental experts from two Israeli universities issued a report in June warning that the imminent collapse of Gaza's water, sewage and electricity infrastructure would soon rebound on Israel.
Last week, Israel announced that it was ready to open its ports for the Gaza residents who want to emigrate. This suggests strongly that the government in Tel Aviv has been inflicting suffering on the Gaza Strip intentionally in an effort to push its residents to leave.
Briefing: "No Justification for Israel to Shoot Protesters with Live Ammunition": "The Commission has reasonable grounds to believe that during the Great March of Return, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, and must be immediately investigated by Israel," said the Chair of the Commission, Santiago Canton of Argentina.
Palestinians have paid a great price for their call for life with dignity during mass protests held along Gaza's boundary with Israel over the past eight months. Some 180 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli occupation forces and nearly 6,000 others injured by live fire during the Great March of Return. "The vast majority of casualties were unarmed, and were fatally shot from a distance while in the Gaza Strip itself," according to a new report by the Israeli group B'Tselem.
As we, Palestinians of Gaza, embark on our long walk to freedom, we have come to the conclusion that we can no longer rely on governments; instead, we request that the citizens of the world oppose these ongoing deadly crimes.
Friday marked what Gaza's health ministry described as the single bloodiest day of the Great March of Return protests since 14 May, when Israeli occupation forces fatally injured more than 60 Palestinians. Seven Palestinians, including two children [one 11 and the other 14 years old], were slain on Friday, two days shy of the six-month anniversary of the protest launch.
Les visées israéliennes dans la bande de Gaza semblent se réaliser. Elles sont illustrées quotidiennement.
The practice of willful killing of civilian protesters at the Gaza fence is part and parcel of an ongoing Israeli policy targeting the civilian Palestinians of the Gaza strip and systematically denying them their rights to movement, work, medical care, study, livelihood and increasingly life itself.
The Israeli army has deprived generations of Palestinians in the West Bank of their basic civil rights, including the rights to free assembly, association and expression, regularly drawing on military orders issued in the first days of the occupation. Even if such restrictions could have been justified then to preserve public order and safety, the suspension of core rights more than half a century later with no end in sight violates Israel's core responsibilities under the law of occupation.
Since its creation, the occupying state developed and enforced laws and practices that led to both the systematic use of torture and to absolute impunity for the perpetrator of this crime. There has never been any individual or agency held accountable for the well-documented crimes of torture and ill-treatment at Israeli prisons and interrogation centers. The occupation authorities, in particular, the Israeli intelligence agency "Shabak" resorts to torture and ill-treatment as standard operating procedure in a systematic and wide-scale approach against Palestinian detainees.
In 2018, the Israeli occupation authorities continued implementing their main policy to enshrine the apartheid and racism regime against Palestinians, this policy is integrated within its laws, judiciary and practices… In 2018, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested around (6500) Palestinians, including (1080) children, (133) women, (6) PLC members and (17) journalists. Additionally, they issued (912) administrative detention orders, (398) of which were new. In 2018, the IOF continued its policy of arbitrary detention of Palestinians. The year, 2018, ended with 5700 Palestinian detained in Israeli prisons, this number included (230) were children, (54) are females including one minor, approximately (500) administrative detainees, (19) journalists, (8) PLC members, and around (700) prisoners with health issues needing urgent medical attention. There are also (27) long-term prisoners who were arrested before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993; including the two longest serving prisoners, Karim and Maher Younis, who were arrested in 1983."
Een volledig vernieuwd digitaal kenniscentrum over Israël en Palestina. Met inmiddels een kleine honderd artikelen over onderwerpen die belangrijk zijn voor het begrip van wat er is gebeurd in het Palestina van vóór 1948, in de joodse staat vanaf 1948 en in de bezette gebieden. En voor wat er vandaag de dag aan de hand is in de Negev woestijn, in de Jordaanvallei en in Jeruzalem...
Foodstuffs originating in the territories occupied by the State of Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from an Israeli settlement within that territory, by the indication of that provenance.
Letter sent to: Ms. Federica Mogherini - High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and to: Mr Carlos Moedas - European Commission, DG for Research and Innovation. The letter was answered by Commissioner Moedas, July 11: click here!
Gaza's health system is chronically deteriorating and more than a decade of blockade has led to a serious deterioration of the social determinants of health. Water from the aquifer is basically unfit for human consumption, sewage flows largely untreated into the Mediterranean and the economy is stifled, with unemployment rates way over 50%. Of the 1.4 million Palestinians in need of humanitarian interventions in 2019, 1.2 million live in the Gaza Strip.
In the course of 2017, an unprecedented amount of 2,220 structures were demolished in the Bedouin communities in the Negev/Naqab - an unfathomable number. The State of Israel implements its demolition policy in all Bedouin localities, recognized and unrecognized alike, and demolishes new structures alongside old ones, in order to force its Bedouin citizens to settle according to the government's aspirations and the various master-plans it created.
The authors of this report, examining whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, fully appreciate the sensitivity of the question. Even broaching the issue has been denounced by spokespersons of the Israeli Government and many of its supporters as anti-Semitism in a new guise.
"This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law".
"Telkens als in uw repliek de Israëlische zijde ter sprake komt, kenmerkt uw woordgebruik zich door een hoge mate aan empathie en gevoelsmatig inlevingsvermogen. Dit empathische taalgebruik blijft bij u achterwege zodra de duizenden onschuldige, Palestijnse slachtoffers ter sprake komen. Dit volharden in een 2-maten-2-gewichten-politiek, waarin de zwakke wél zwaar wordt aangepakt maar men de sterke de facto laat betijen, hoe moeten we dat vanuit moreel opzicht benoemen, geachte Minister De Croo? Ik zou durven gewagen van: "moreel verwerpelijk"."
Avi Shlaim
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have experienced life in Israel's prisons since 1967, as did many more in previous decades during the course of the ongoing Israeli military occupation. Yet rarely has the story of their experiences in Israeli jails been told by the prisoners themselves. Typically the Western media portrays them as 'terrorists' while well-meaning third-party human rights advocates paint them as hapless victims. They are neither. This book permits the reader to access the reality of Palestinian imprisonment as told by Palestinian prisoners themselves - stories of appalling suffering and determination to reclaim their freedom. Palestinian prisoners are an essential element in the collective resistance against Israeli colonialism, apartheid and military occupation. Rather than being viewed as unfortunate victims, their steadfastness exemplifies the ongoing fight of the Palestinian people as a whole. Despite Palestinian factionalism and lack of a unified political movement, Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons serve as one of the remaining platforms for unity.
Palestinian prisoners charged with security-related offences are immediately taken as a threat to Israel's security. They are seen as potential, if not actual, suicide bombers. This stereotype ignores the political nature of the Palestinian prisoners' actions and their desire for liberty.
As the situation in Israel/Palestine seems to become ever more intractable and protracted, the need for new ways of looking at recent developments and their historical roots is more pressing than ever. Bearing this in mind, Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail B.Bakan discuss the historic and contemporary dynamics in Israel/Palestine, and their international reverberations, from the unique vantage point of 'race', racialization, racism and anti-racism. They therefore offer close analysis of the 'idea' of Israel and the 'absence' of Palestine by examining the concepts of race and identity in the region. With fresh coverage of themes relating to gender, indigeneity, the environment, surveillance and the war on terror, "Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race" will appeal to scholars in political science, sociology and Middle East studies.
Review/Report: Dana El Kurd, "Memoir of a Jewish Arab" (Middle East Report Online, Oct 04): click here!
Justice for Some offers a new approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through the power and control of international law. Focusing on key junctures — from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to present-day wars in Gaza — Noura Erakat shows how the strategic deployment of law has shaped current conditions. Over the past century, the law has done more to advance Israel's interests than the Palestinians'. But, Erakat argues, this outcome was never inevitable. Interview & excerpt on Jadaliyya: click here!
Religiously inspired colonial nationalism feeds Israel's wars. "War over Peace", by the Israeli sociologist Uri Ben-Eliezer, raises several questions about the nature of Israeli society, chief among them being: Why has Israel attempted to solve virtually every conflict it has encountered or engendered by military rather than diplomatic means? His answer might briefly be summarized as follows: War and violence are embedded in Zionist ideology.
Positioning race front and centre, this book theorizes that political violence, in the form of a socio-political process that differentiates between human and less-than-human populations, is used by the state of Israel in racializing and ruling the citizens of occupied Palestine. Lentin argues that Israel's rule over Palestine is an example of Agamben's state of exception, Goldberg's racial state and Wolfe's settler colony; the Israeli racial settler colony employs its laws to rule besieged Palestine, while excluding itself and its Jewish citizen-colonists from legal instruments and governmental technologies. Governing through emergency legislation and through practices of exception, emergency, necessity and security, Israel positions itself outside domestic and international law.
In this groundbreaking book, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Occupation, the outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappé examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel.
This book reveals the role played by identity documents in Israel's apartheid policies towards the Palestinians, from the red passes of the 1950s to the orange, green and blue passes of today. The authors chronicle how millions of Palestinians have been denationalised through the bureaucratic tools of census, population registration, blacklisting and a discriminatory legal framework. They show how identity documents are used by Israel as a means of coercion, extortion, humiliation and informant recruitment. Movement restrictions tied to IDs and population registers threaten Palestinian livelihoods, freedom of movement and access to basic services such as health and education.
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Libertad y Progreso (LyP), an Atlas Network partner based in Argentina, recently partnered with the Fraser Institute, another Atlas Network partner based in Canada, to discuss the role of government in the economy in "Economic Freedom Audit in Argentina 2017" (report in Spanish).
In the report, LyP argues: "Economic freedom reflects the ability of individuals and families to make their own economic decisions, limiting government interference." In a free society, economic freedom and government interference are inversely related — the more the government is involved in the economic decisions of Argentines, the less economic freedom they have. Consequently, the report goes on, saying, "Those nations that [retained] free-market policies are now among the most prosperous countries in the world, while Argentina followed a populist way and the prospects dimmed."
Their research is based on the Index of Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) which has six key factors in determining the amount economic freedom a country has: size of government, legal structure of property rights, currency access, freedom to trade, and regulations on business. Argentina is currently one of the lowest-rated countries.
LyP believes that "A shift toward a freer economy could help Argentina rise to a level equivalent to that of the prosperity of the most developed nations," even citing the correlation between more economic freedom and less political corruption.
By looking at issues such as government consumption, taxes, transfer and subsidies, judicial efficiency, property rights, contract enforcement, barriers to international and domestic trade, and credit market regulations, the report analyzes some of the most relevant economic problems in Argentina in hopes of increasing economic freedom and prosperity.
Read the full "Economic Freedom Audit in Argentina 2017" report here (report in Spanish).

subset: commoncrawl


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George W. Bush's Painted Atonements. George W.
Bush looms small in memory. The Presidency fit him like grownup clothes on a toddler. He made, or haplessly fronted for, some execrable decisions, but hating him took conscious effort. The aircraft-carrier landing was kind of cute, if you squinted your conscience. "Heckuva job, Brownie" was guileless to a festering fault.
The mission has resurfaced. Which brings us to a surprisingly likable while starkly disturbing new book, "Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief's Tribute to America's Warriors." The quality of the art is astonishingly high for someone who—because he "felt antsy" in retirement, he writes, after "I had been an art-agnostic all my life"—took up painting from a standing stop, four years ago, at the age of sixty-six. President Bush sent these men and women into harm's way, and they came back harmed—often minus limbs from I.E.D. and mine explosions—and, in all cases, traumatized to some degree.
Nothing is Hidden - September 24, 2014. Nothing is HiddenIn David Lynch's new exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the mundane and macabre come together.
The Cretan Paradox - November 12, 2014. The Cretan ParadoxIt's riveting and highly influential, but El Greco's work never quite fit.
Could the reason lie in his birthplace? El Greco is confusing. He is one of the few universally acknowledged great artists of history who does not fit into any of the established art movements or categories. Given his time period (late 16th – early 17th centuries), his art should fit into the early Baroque. But it does not. El Greco, by contrast, painted unnatural bodies. Except, there is no evidence that El Greco had any interest in spiritual visions or mystical ecstasies. What to do with an artist who slips through every explanation? El Greco is the artist who came from nowhere and never quite fit in. El Greco, then, came from an island that is at the very heart of the story of Mediterranean civilization.
These are old stories, ancient memories. The Minor Miracle of John le Carré's 'A Most Wanted Man' « My favorite line from any John le Carré novel (at the moment, at least; it changes all the time) is from Little Drummer Girl: "Somewhere in every bomb explosion there is a miracle."
He was writing about an investigation into an explosion at an Israeli diplomat's home in Germany. It's one of the few explosions I can recall taking place in his novels, even though most of them are set during the Cold War or the lukewarm-to-radioactive conflicts that followed it. Never mind the lack of explosions, though; his writing is full of miracles. A Most Wanted Man is minor le Carré, and the film version of the novel is a minor le Carré adaptation.
Don't take that the wrong way: This is the man who wrote Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — probably the greatest espionage novel ever written and the basis for one of the greatest spy stories ever filmed (the seven-part 1979 BBC miniseries starring Alec Guinness). Every few years, someone tries to make a le Carré novel into a movie. The Reviews Are in For Bush's Paintings. On Friday, the George W.
Bush Presidential Library unveiled the former president's show of 24 world leader portraits and the art world had plenty to say about it. The paintings on view in "The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy" have already been compared to Alex Katz, Luc Tuymans, and Forrest Gump. Now that the dust has settled and the reviews are in, here's what critics from Roberta Smith to Alastair Sooke wrote about Bush's blockbuster show.
Roberta Smith for the New York Times: Portrait of a failed president: Inside the art of George W. Bush. Former President George W.
Bush's first public art exhibit, "The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy," opened at his presidential library in Dallas on Saturday. The left largely greeted his never-before-seen portraits of world leaders with a mix of derision and fascination. It would be easy to merely rag on these paintings. Of course they're terrible; Bush is an amateur painter, and very literal-minded. Commentators have compared the works to coloring-book images and kitsch. No, George W. Bush's paintings tell us nothing about Iraq. Correction: This article originally attributed a critique of the Bush paintings to Philip Kennicott which was actually made by Greg Allen "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject." – Winston Churchill George W.
Bush's art teacher believes in his passion. "His whole heart was in it," said Bonnie Flood, a Georgia-based artist who reportedly spent one month — six hours a day — teaching the former president to paint.


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OpenCV 3 � Advanced Image Detection and Reconstruction
MP4 | Video: AVC 1280x720 | Audio: AAC 44KHz 2ch | Duration: 1.5 Hours | 342 MB
Genre: eLearning | Language: English
Making your applications see has never been easier with OpenCV. With it, you can teach your robot how to follow your cat, write a program to correctly identify the members of One Direction, or even help you find the right colors for your redecoration. OpenCV 3 Computer Vision Application Programming Solutions provides a complete introduction to the OpenCV library and explains how to build your first computer vision program. You will be presented with a variety of computer vision algorithms, and exposed to important concepts in image and video analysis, which will enable you to build your own computer vision applications.
This video helps you to get started with the OpenCV library, and shows you how to install and deploy it to write effective computer vision applications following good programming practices. You will learn how to read and write images and manipulate their pixels. Different techniques for image enhancement and shape analysis will be presented. You will learn how to detect specific image features such as lines, circles, or corners. You will be introduced to the concepts of mathematical morphology and image filtering.


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Fuschl am See
21 Number of reviews:
95 % Recommendation rate:
|Highest point:
|1,567 m
|Lowest point:
|750 m
|Altitude ski resort:
|669 m
|Lifts in total:
|Tow lifts:
|Chair lifts:
|Gondola lift:
|Pistes in total:
|34 km
|23 km
|10 km
|1 km
Ski holidays Fuschl – Alpine spa resort at the lake!
Fuschl am SeeFuschl is fairly small holiday resort and is located directly on the shores of the idyllic Fuschlsee, right in between Salzburg and Bad Ischl, in the heart of the Salzkammergut. Fuschl is popular holiday resort for activity seekers, as the conditions here are ideal - both in summer and in winter.
For winter sports fans there are numerous activity offers in resort available, but especially the close proximity to the ski area Gaissau-Hintersee and some individual lifts in the area, are ideal for families and beginners. Beautiful cross-country trails, tasty local specialities and impressive mountain backdrops round off the diverse offers and ensure this area makes for a perfect holiday experience.
SalzkammergutThe holiday region of Salzkammergut lies on the northern Alpine border and is situated in northern Austria, on the border to Steiermark and near Salzburg. Salkammergut extends from the Wolfgangsee, over the Almtal and the Dachstein glacier, and all the way to the eastern edge of the city of Salzburg. With its gorgeous location in the Alpine foothills and on the edge of the northern Limestone Alps, the landscape harbours 76 lakes of various sizes, such as the Wolfgangsee, Mondsee, Attersee, and the Traunsee. Innumerable mountains, such as the Dachstein, Traunstein, and the Höllengebirge, create a dreamy, wintery panoramic view.
Travel Info Fuschl am See
- By train: Salzburg (approx. 40 km)
- By plane: Salzburg (approx. 40 km), Lienz (approx. 215 km), Innsbruck (approx. 220 km)


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Seminar Center for Global Humanities Lecture/Seminar Series
For us, it's "The American Dream." For the Russians, the quality that they think best defines them is Russkaia Dusha, "The Russian Soul." But today, with a Big Mac on the tray and rap music in the earphones, what is happening to the "Russian Soul?" This seminar will examine current efforts to reassert "Russianness" in Russia. Topics include the Eurasian, Nationalist, and Cosmist movements, and the nostalgia for Stalinism.
George Young has degrees from Duke and Yale, has taught Russian language and literature at Grinnell and Dartmouth, and is the author of a book and many essays on Russian and Western Esoteric literature, art, and philosophy. He has taught in the UNE English Department since 2003.
Assigned Reading
James H. Billington, Russia in Search of Itself (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004)
A reception will be held at 5pm at the UNE Art Gallery
Center for Global Humanities
(207) 221-4335


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Wired New York Forum
News and Politics
> What's your stand on immigration?
View Full Version :
What's your stand on immigration?
August 25th, 2003, 03:17 PM
I want to know how members feel about immigration in general.
August 25th, 2003, 05:18 PM
The Coming of Mexifornia
By John Fonte
Hudson Institute | August 21, 2003
In his latest book, Mexifornia: A State Of Becoming, [Victor Davis] Hanson dissects Americas mass immigration/anti-assimilation status quo and details how it undermines our national interests.
He bluntly lays out the problem:
"The really perilous course lies in preserving the status quo and institutionalizing our past failed policies: open borders, unlimited immigration, dependence on cheap and illegal labor, obsequious deference to Mexico City, erosion of legal statutes, multiculturalism in our schools, and a general breakdown in the old assimilationist model."
And he presents a clear solution:
If we are serious people, we will "adopt sweeping restrictions on immigration;" end "separatist ideology;" promote a "stronger mandate for assimilation;" (meaning real civic education in our schools, emphasizing American culture and values); and end "the two-tier legal system for illegal aliens." By this he means ending practices such as allowing illegal aliens in California to get into state universities for reduced tuition rates while American citizens from neighboring Arizona and Nevada pay the full price.
As a leading military historian, Hanson is undoubtedly familiar with the crucial insight of Karl von Clausewitz, that the best way to defeat an adversary is to strike at what the great Prussian strategist called the opponents "center of gravity," a "hub of movement and power on which everything depends." This "center of gravity" could be an enemys main military forces, capital city, national morale, or alliance system. In any case, Clausewitz states, that if the enemys "center of gravity" collapses, the enemy will be defeated.
Left-Right Alliance
Hanson targets the "center of gravity" of the mass immigration/weak assimilation regime as the product of a de facto alliance of the Corporate/Libertarian Right and the Multicultural Left that protects and promotes this system. He states, "Both parties, after all, did their part to get us into this predicament and have so far escaped accountability for the harm they have done." Illegal immigration "continues on unabated" because "it unites the power and influence of employers with the rhetoric and threats of the race industry." Who, after all, "wants to be called an isolationist or a nativist by the corporate Right and a racist or bigot by the multicultural Left?"
But Hanson, a man with Mexican-American nieces, nephews, sisters-in-law, and prospective sons-in-law, who has labored in the fields alongside his workers, faced down illegal alien intruders on his property, and been the target of academic smear campaigns, is not a man to be intimidated. In Mexifornia he charges ahead and details the damage that the Right-Left open-borders coalition has wrought.
One of the major premises on which the pro-mass immigration Rights worldview rests is the assertion that the assimilation of immigrants into the American mainstream is proceeding today successfully much as it has in the past. Thus, Michael Barone, a leading spokesman for this view, insists that "we have been here before." There is nothing to be concerned about because the history of American immigration will essentially repeat itselfEllis Island reduxwith todays Latinos playing the role of yesterdays Italians, assimilating, joining the middle class, andas a bonus for political conservativeseven voting Republican.
After the publication of his influential book The New Americans, in 2001, the affable and well-connected Barone, was everywhere in the pre-9/11 world of the establishment center-right: the K Street business luncheons, the think-tanks, the Republican side of the Hill, spreading the wordlet mass immigration continue; throw in an amnesty for good measure; and it will all work out fine, just like in did in the past. Hanson never mentions Barone, but Mexifornia is a root and branch repudiation of the vision of The New Americans and of the entire business/libertarian pro-mass immigration worldview.
Hanson begins by explaining that Mexican immigration is different. In contrast to immigrants from "the Philippines, China, Japan, Basque Spain, Armenia, and the Punjab," for the Mexican arrival in California there is little physical separation from the homeland; after all, "the Rio Grande is no ocean." This makes assimilation more difficult. Add to this the "enormous numbers" (Mexicans are the largest single immigrant group) and "the constant stream of new arrivals" which "means for each assimilated Mexican, there are several more who are not."
Also, Hanson notes, in the past, Italian, Jewish, and Polish immigrants knew that if they did not learn English they would be failures in America. Today, "A Mexican in California senses that if he fails to integrate into mainstream American society, there will always be thousands of more newcomers like himself who will . . . join him in a viable expatriate culture." Moreover, American leaders "lack confidence in the melting pot" and make little, if any, attempt to assimilate immigrants into their language or their culture.
While American elites of the both the left and right tend to pander to the Mexican governing class, Hanson is highly critical of this group, "which both deliberately exports its unwanted and, once they safely reach American soil, suddenly becomes their champion and absent parent, as much out of resentment toward the United States, as in real concern for people whom they apparently are so gladly free of."
Massive immigration to and financial bailouts from their northern neighbor are, in fact, what allows the Mexican elite to avoid real reform. Hanson insists that "Market capitalism, constitutional democracy, the creation of a middle-class ethic . . .will never fully come to Mexico as long its potential critics go north" instead of marching on Mexico City.
Assimilation Then and Now
With empathy Hanson describes the world of the illegal alien. It is mostly a young mans world that starts in hope, but soon turns to resignation and is pretty much over by age forty, as knees, backs, and shoulders give way. Although the illegal aliens earn much more than they ever could in Mexico, they begin to compare their circumstances of backbreaking work, not to life in Mexico but to the seemingly easy life of their American employers sitting at poolside, sipping drinks, gossiping on cell phones. Human nature being what it is, they become resentful of these affluent "gringos." At the same time, their children, who know little of Mexico, become even more resentful.
The world of the illegal alien contains the pathologies as well as the strengths of young men. As Hanson puts it, "in the history of civilization it is single transient young men who build bridges and roads, but also bring societies their crime and violence." Not surprisingly, almost a fourth of all inmates in California prisons are from Mexico. The author describes a series of personal confrontations with young illegal aliens who vandalize, steal, and deal drugs on his property. Parroting Chicano Studies ideology, one gang member told him, "Hey, its our land anyway, not yours."
Hanson looks askance at upper- and middle-class Americans (both liberals and conservatives) who have winked at the development of a two-tiered peonage-style economic system based on cheap illegal labor that has created a new segregation in which the "helots" even live in their own towns that resemble, in many respects, some of the negative aspects of rural Mexico.
In contrast to todays failed immigration and assimilation policies, Mexican immigration to America before 1970 was a great success story. The old assimilationist model worked. Hanson describes civic education in his predominately Mexican-American school in the small town of Selma in the heart of Californias Central Valley in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They learned a "tough Americanism" with "biographies of Teddy Roosevelt, stories about Lou Gehrig, recitations from Longfellow, demonstrations of how to fold the flag, a repertoire of patriot songs to master." He "can still remember" his fellow students singing "God Bless America" with the "Spanish accented refrains" of "Stand bêsid her."
Nor did they simply learn a one-sided "triumphalist" history as contemporary academics tell us. They learned about Americas failings, about slavery, segregation, discrimination and prejudice. But Hanson remembers that discussions of the negative aspects of Americas past did not "teach the cheap lesson that America was racist and oppressive." Instead, there was a sense of balance "achieved through the comparison with contemporary societies elsewhere, and confidence in our values, measured against a recognition of innate human weakness."
The end result of this type of civic education was a Selma, California, composed of and run by assimilated, patriotic Mexican-Americans, Hansons friends, neighbors, and in-laws. He writes, "If the purpose of such an education system as the one that formed us was to turn out true Americans of every hue, and to instill in them a love of their country and a sense of personal possibility, then the evidence forty years later would say that is was an unquestionable success." His former classmates, overwhelmingly Mexican-Americans, have become teachers, principals, business executives, army officers, skilled mechanics, insurance agents, and lawyers. They are the true heroes of this book, and they prove that successful assimilation is not based on race or ethnicity, but on embracing our common culture and the American Way of Life.
Race Industry vs. Pop Culture
The civic education of Hansons youth that achieved what may be called "patriotic assimilation" has been undermined for the past three decades by the other half of the Right-Left open-borders coalition, the Multicultural Left. If the Corporate/Libertarian Right marches under the banner of the Dollar, the Multicultural Left marches under the banner of Racial Separatism. In our colleges and universities there are separate admissions criteria, separate curricula, separate dorms, separate rules, and finally even separate graduation ceremonies for different races and ethnic groups.
In a chapter that examines the damage done both to Latinos in the United States and to the nation itself in the name of multiculturalism, Hanson strips the moral authority from those he calls "race manipulators." In blunt language he explains how a "new race industry" committed to an "agenda of separatism and racial spoils" in the schools, universities, bureaucracies, unions, and politics subverts our common culture, dis-integrates our nation, and harms the life-chances of the very "clients" it claims to speak for.
Mastery of the English language and of an academic curriculum that could help Latino students compete in Californias tough labor market is discouraged in the states public schools and colleges in favor of the separatist ideology of Chicano Studies and a bilingual education in which Mexican-American children become competent in neither English nor Spanish.
Hanson contemptuously denounces racial ideologists in the universities: "If there is truly a lingering racism in California, then one need go no further than the state universities, where so much money and power has been handed over to an elite class of racialists who in return have created a curriculum designed to guarantee failure for the children of migrants."
Hanson points out that Mexicans and Mexican-Americans have dismal high school and college graduation rates and are over-represented in "our jails, prisons, and welfare programs," yet the grip of the racial ideologues remains. He suggests, only partially tongue-in-cheek, that it is as if " a white supremacist and a crackpot racist got together" and "brewed the germs of our present school curriculum, concocted the virus of the La Raza separatist and racist mythology, and then released these pathogens . . . [on] unsuspecting Californians, who then proceeded unknowingly to destroy the aspirations of millions of desperately poor aliens."
After excoriating the Multicultural Left, Hanson suggests that the "wholly amoral power of a new popular and global culture" offers a countervailing force to their consciously anti-assimilation actions, in a chapter that has caused some consternation among conservatives.
Global popular culturethe new music, fast food, videos, MTV, boorish entertainment, crass magazines, slang speech, unisex clothes, defiant youth attitudesis a revolutionary egalitarian development smashing old hierarchies, authorities, and standardstrumping family, ethnicity, race, gender, class, religion, and government. It indiscriminately levels both outmoded snobbery and good taste. It undermines the multicultural race agitator as well as the earnest teacher.
It is "schlock" Hanson tell us, "perhaps deleterious to the long-term moral health of the United States" but in "the short term it is about the only tool we possess to prevent racial separation and ethnic tribalism."
But obviously, Hanson notes, "superficial immersion" in American popular culture is "no substitute for real civic education about American history, culture, and values." In the end, the "leveling effect of popular culture does buy us a little time. It gives America a few years respite before we must deal with the catastrophe that we are not educating millions, not teaching them a common and elevated culture, and not addressing the dilemma of open borders." (And perhaps as the emergence of Arnold Schwartzenegger has revealed, popular culture might "buy a little time" a "few years respite" for the California Republican Party as well.)
Four Choices for America
In the concluding chapter, Hanson declares that Californians (and, thus, Americans) have essentially four choices in dealing with immigration. First we could "continue de facto open-borders" but insist upon assimilation. Second we could vastly reduce immigration and assume that assimilation will take care of itself. ThirdHansons choicewe could combine greatly reduced immigration (both legal and illegal) with vigorous patriotic assimilation.
The fourth path¾our present policywould lead to "a true Mexifornia," an "apartheid state" that "even the universal solvent of popular culture could not unite." California would then combine the "worst attributes of both nations," an "American individualism shorn of both Anglo-Saxon-inspired allegiance to the letter of the law and traditional Mexican familial and religious bedrock values."
In this case, Hanson tells us, poverty becomes endemic; schools erode; crime soars; taxes increase; budget deficits explode; legal or illegal status becomes "irrelevant" for college tuition, drivers licenses, welfare, and "perhaps soon even voting privileges." The assimilated upper and upper-middle classes of all races practice a "self-interested apartheid" while professing "selfless liberality." A new argot of Spanglish, the "dumbing-down of both languages," emerges among a large, unassimilated, constantly growing Latino underclass that dwarfs both the upper class and an assimilated and intermarried middle and working class.
Advancing Party of the Flag?
Victor Davis Hansons Mexifornia is creating quite a stir among mainstream conservatives. It is the summer sensation, with a cover story in National Review and overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic reviews in the center-right press. Even the Wall Street Journal had some favorable comments.
One reason for this enthusiasm is that the book has arrived at just the right time. Conservatives are having "second thoughts" on immigration and assimilation policies. During the 1970s and 1980s, when there was broad support for relatively open immigration among conservatives, it was assumed that assimilation into the American mainstream would take care itself. With the publication of a seminal article ("Time to Rethink Immigration") in National Review in June 1992, by a free-market journalist and Forbes contributor named Peter Brimelow, opposition to mass immigration started to build on the right. Under the editorship of John OSullivan, National Review was at the center of this first-wave debate that faded in the late 90s.
During the same period, however, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it was becoming increasingly clear to many thoughtful conservatives that traditional assimilation was not working. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, leading conservative intellectuals and activists began having "second thoughts" about our de facto mass immigration policy. The events of 9/11 further strengthened the rethinking.
Today, this "second thoughts" group would include, in varying degrees, Californians such as Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, and former leftists David Horowitz and Peter Collier (Collier urged Hanson to write this manuscript in the first place for Encounter Books, his publishing house); City Journal writers such as Myron Magnet and Heather MacDonald; First Things editor Fr. Richard John Neuhaus; American Enterprise editor Karl Zinsmeister; Hudson Institute President Herb London; Nixon Center President Dimitri Simes and center scholar Robert Leiken; academics including Walter McDougall, James Kurth, Fred Lynch, and Samuel Huntington; National Association of Scholars stalwarts such as Carol Iannone, Glynn Custred, Thomas Wood, Gilbert T. Sewall, and Eugene Genovese; journalist Michele Malkin (whose new book on immigration and national security, Invasion, is a best seller); the National Reviews Ramesh Ponnuru; Claremont Institute scholars Ken Masugi and Tom West; neoconservative professor Fred Siegal; and, since 9/11, the prominent scholar of Islam and presidential appointee, Daniel Pipes. Even the venerable libertarian thinker Milton Friedman has noted that mass immigration and the welfare state dont mix.
With the strong and positive reception given Mexifornia, conservatives have now entered the second stage of their internal debate over immigration and assimilation. In one sense, conservatives are divided between those who seriously believe in democratic self-government, that is to say, that a people that wants to limit immigration has the moral right and the ability to do so, versus those who believe in economic or demographic determinism, who tells us that the market requires and demands continuous mass immigration regardless of what the American people want and that there is nothing we can do to stop illegal immigration anyway. Hanson, who insists that the future is ours to shape, is clearly in the democratic camp as opposed to the determinist one.
In another sense, conservatives are divided between those who emphasize the long-term national interests in strengthening American unity and our common civic culture and those who emphasize the short-term economic interests of the benefits of cheap labor. The irony facing the "economy über alles" conservatives is that their open-borders policies create the types of social costs, high taxes, and left-wing politics that ultimately undermine both the free market and the nation.
Moral Arguments
In the name of national cohesion and self-government, Mexifornia strikes a major blow for The Party of the Flag against the Right-Left coalition that allies The Party of the Dollar with The Party of Racial Separatism. Hansons main weapons are moral arguments. He tells us that the current policies protected by this Left-Right alliance have undermined our common culture in the post 9/11 world; harmed the very Latinos they are designed to help; weakened the standard of living for working-class whites, African-Americans, native-born Mexican-Americans, and legal immigrants; and created new forms of segregation and a virulent race industry. Logically it follows that these policies are amoral, if not immoral.
Hansons emphasis on moral factors in Mexifornia is reminiscent of one of his books on military history. In The Soul of Battle (1999) Hanson narrates the campaigns of three extraordinary generalsancient Greeces Epaminondas, the Civil Wars Sherman, and World War IIs Pattonwho led democratic armies against authoritarian, race-based regimes (Sparta, the Old South, National Socialist Germany). Common to all three generals was their moral vision of fighting against injusticeSpartan helotage, Southern slave society, Nazi race superiority. They were moralists as well as realists. They were "better warmakers," Hanson tells us, because they were ultimately fueled by democratic ideas and an ethical agenda.
Hansons Mexifornia is also compelled by a moral vision. He is a better policymaker because his writing is fueled by an ethical agenda. He strikes at the center of gravity of an amoral Left-Right alliance that, while obviously not authoritarian, is clearly cynical and opportunistic with its own, twenty-first century variants of race manipulators and helotage-creating systems that ultimately subvert the cohesion of the United States as a nation.
Like his hero William Tecumseh Sherman, who promised to "make Georgia howl," Victor Davis Hanson surely makes his opponentsthese modern-day anti-unionists"howl." But the larger question is this: As summer turns to fall, will the intellectual war over the relationship of immigration to American unity and our common culture accelerate? Is Mexifornia the beginning of a new ideological offensive by The Party of the Flag that outlines a moral vision in the name of a united American people? And if Hanson is Sherman, who will play Grant?
My guess is that John OSullivan, a bloodied and savvy veteran of the immigration/multicultural wars of the 90s who takes the helm of The National Interest in September, is ready to fill this roleready like Grant to wage a war of attrition, issue by issue, trench by trench, against the forces of Separatism that make up the Corporate Right-Multicultural Left nexus: the business lobbyists, the libertarian editorialists, the pandering politicians, the immigration rights lawyers, the international law specialists, the group preference advocates, the race industry, the multicultural educators, the promoters of transnational and subnational arrangements that degrade our democratic sovereignty, and all those who directly or indirectly undermine the unity of the American nation.John Fonte is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Freedom Tower
August 25th, 2003, 08:18 PM
Immigrants are what made this country. However, if they choose to not learn English then it becomes a problem. Now everything has an English and Spanish translation. It's ridiculous. If you move here you should also speak the language. Also, there should be some controls on immigration so that every student visa holding terrorist gets kicked out. We need to be more careful with who we let in, but we must continue to let them in. As long as we don't let terrorists or people plotting to kill us come into the country there's no problem with immigration. Near Mexico, however, we need to improve border security so that if anyone DOES come in, they will also become legal. There are too many border jumpers that get in and are here illegally.
Freedom Tower
August 25th, 2003, 08:25 PM
I also agree with Chris' aritcle that shows the insanity of making illegals pay less for college than american citizens. Colleges are historically known to be left wing, but to actually show they prefer foreigners to americans is crazy. But I don't doubt the reality of it, after all we have affirmative action. I'm very dissapointed those liberal judges chose to keep affirmative action. Our government is based on the notion *"All men are created equal". However, I guess the country for some reason believes minorities deserve more than the average caucasian. But I'm digressing from immigration, so I'm going to stop talking for now.
August 26th, 2003, 01:47 AM
I don't think the current system, if it can even be called a system, serves the immigrants any better than it serves the U.S.
This country was built on assimilated immigration. I use to be one of those Libertarians who said the more the merrier, and I still largely agree with that position. However, I've come to realize that it is assimilated immigration, people who come here to build on the "American Dream" that built and continue to build this country. The immigration from Mexico is a predominantly unassimilated expatriate community, it is simply Mexico overflowing into the States. It also creates a huge class divide between servant/worker illegals and legal U.S. citizens... not to mention the strain on California's social services and educational system which is unable to absorb the influx. It has created an illegal immigrant class of net debtors on society (people who take more from public services than they contribute in taxes) who understandably resent their station in a two tier society. It also becomes a release valve for Mexico's inability to solve many of its own problems. Every immigrant that goes North is one less strain on their own social services, legal system, and unemployment statistics.
As a committed globalist, it was a huge leap for me to make. I'm now on the other side of the fence from most of my Libertarian contemporaries.
Concerns about terrorist and national security in general have fueled much of the recent focus on this issue, but it is a tertiary issue for me at best.
California is the U.S.'s largest economy and, were it a country in its own right, would be the fourth largest economy in the world. Right now it is in shambles. I feel California's problems are an under acknowledged contributor to the current economic woes in this country. The fact is, the U.S. economy is not going to upswing until California's does. I'm not saying that immigration policy is the cause, of this, but it cannot continue to go on in this manner if California is to thrive. Past immigration was not anarchy. Ellis Island is a monument to the fact that past immigration was "managed immigration and assimilation".
(Edited by chris at 1:53 am on Aug. 26, 2003)
September 6th, 2003, 11:55 AM
To be fiar, I'll leave a link for those wanting to read more about the illegal alien problem:
September 30th, 2003, 11:57 PM
I'm a son of Korean immigrants, who was born and raised in America, so here's my thought on it. I'm for immigration as long its done the legal way. Illegal immigration is a serious problem and needs to be stopped. Also, its very dangerous, risky, and deadly. Also, immigrants have to assimilate and learn English to survive.
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Karndean Designflooring is introducing new wood and stone designs to its Da Vinci collection of luxury vinyl tiles.
The new designs in the collection include 14 new wood design which have been inspired by distressed wood planks and replicate the unique look that combines transformation of wood overtime.
They include four modern limed planks inspired by natural fibres and textures; three classic oak looks available in shades from light to medium brown; three burnt and smoked designs; and two sea salt worn effects of reclaimed driftwood looks.
The wood design offer the benefits of the natural reclaimed timber look without drawbacks of cracking, splintering and warping from real timber.
The collection also includes 12 new stone designs which take inspiration from weathered steel, natural stone and woven fabric. The weathered tones are available in four colour ways – Molten, Iron Ore, Eisen, Carbon – each representing transformation of weathered steel over time. The natural stone designs feature a range of creamy to dark grainy tones. The final three designs take inspiration from natural fabrics and concrete and purposely blurs distinction between the two.
All products are available with a 20-year commercial warranty.


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Ultimate Ansible Bootcamp by School of Devops [Video]
Ansible is set to be the standard in the world of IT infrastructure management. It's a rare combination of simplicity meeting sophistication. Its core principle is simple is reflected in all its design choices such as an agentless setup, small footprint, push model, YAML as a language to define infrastructure state and so on. It's easy to setup, easy to write code with, and easy to extend while writing custom modules. At the same time, it offers everything an IT system, networks or a operations/DevOps person needs. Once you set up the environment with the code spaces tool, you start diving into the simple and sophisticated world of Ansible one concept at a time. By the end of this course, you will have mastered Ansible and should be able to use it to automate servers, applications, and understand all the primitives that Ansible offers.
Style and Approach
This course is been created to help you master Ansible one step at a time. It starts with the fundamental concepts related to infrastructure as code, what Ansible is, what is Idempotence, and what makes Ansible stand apart. Then it helps you relate Ansible to your project by taking up a use case.
|Course Length
|7 hours 22 minutes
|Date Of Publication
|24 May 2018


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ČSSD leader: ANO to bear risks with justice minister
Prague, July 9 (CTK) - The Czech Republic needs a government with confidence and all the risks associated with the nomination of the new justice minister are borne by Prime Minister Andrej Babis's ANO, Interior Minister Jan Hamacek (Social Democrats, CSSD), told journalists on Monday.
Hamacek reacted to the resignation of Justice Minister Tatana Mala (ANO) due to a plagiarism scandal after 13 days in the post earlier on Monday.
Babis said he presumed he would ask President Milos Zeman to entrust him with heading the ministry temporarily instead of Mala.
On Wednesday, the Chamber of Deputies will hold a confidence vote in the minority coalition government of ANO and the CSSD which needs the Communist backing.
CSSD deputy chairman Jaroslav Foldyna said the situation at the Justice Ministry was not normal due to which it should be debated by the CSSD deputy group on Tuesday.
Another Social Democrat deputy chairman, Martin Netolicky, said Mala's resignation was good news for the Czech Republic.
This step increases the likelihood that the new Babis government would gain the confidence of the Chamber of Deputies, Netolicky said.
Copying, dissemination or other publication of this article or parts thereof without the prior written consent of ČTK is expressly forbidden. The Prague Daily Monitor is not responsible for its content.
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Sobbing in the shower – how stress damages
How do you cope with the stressful periods in your life? With a bit of time on the clock, I've had a couple of times in my life where I wrestled with stress and its unhappy consequences. And I don't mean the normal everyday stresses that family, work and community life throw at us on a regular basis. I'm talking about the excoriating effects of dealing with persistent stress – the kind that sends a relentless stream of damaging cortisol into your system over a long period of time. The kind of stress so powerful it can change your personality permanently.
The worst and most damaging kind of stress comes from a situation where you have little control over circumstances and no prospect of that situation changing. Individuals differ in their response to stressful situations and some of us seem to be more vulnerable than others.
I succumbed to serious stress some years ago when I took on a role that required twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week attention on top of my full-time teaching job. I was constitutionally unsuited to the relentless demands of the role and I crashed after a couple of years of struggling to cope. All the joy went out of life; I became easily upset and lost my sense of perspective.
A marking deadline would loom like an impending disaster; I would angst over a routine meeting with colleagues. I had trouble sleeping, waking after a couple of hours to a restless brain filled with endlessly circling worries and unhappy thoughts. Exhaustion made me hungry, and I put on weight – stressful in itself. My brain was functioning so poorly that I convinced myself that sobbing in the shower every morning was a positive coping strategy rather than a powerful indication that I had a serious problem.
Of course I thought I could beat it. I started yoga classes and a vigorous walking regime. I got fitter and the weight gain stopped but the other effects of stress did not. In fact, they became worse.
Yoga class did turn out to be helpful though, and not just to my strength and flexibility. At the end of class we always completed a relaxation sequence and one evening, I was gifted a rare moment of clarity. As I lay on the thin mat, uncomfortable tears running down my face and seeping into the neck of my tee-shirt, I realised that I had to change my situation; that it wouldn't matter how many kilometres I walked or how many hours of yoga I did, my stress levels would not improve if I stayed in the job.
So I resigned, took some sick leave, and slowly regained my equilibrium along with my senses of humour. When I became impatient with progress, a wise friend gave me some invaluable advice: "Angela," he said, "It took you at least two years to get yourself into this mess, and it will probably take about that long to recover." And he was right.
Recovery, even if slow, was via a pretty simple prescription. It didn't include professional help or drugs of any kind; it just involved resting the brain. In other words: going to bed early, resting during the day, reading, meeting friends for support and conversation, eating well and taking light exercise when I felt like it.
In other words, avoiding any pressure until my system had rid itself of the damaging chemical cocktail that stress produces and repaired itself.
I realise how lucky I was to be in a position to be able to take the time needed to accomplish this and I feel for others not so well placed.
That bout with stress taught me some things about myself I would rather not have learnt, although the knowledge has been useful subsequently. Along with family circumstances, it was pride that made me stay in the role for longer than I should have. I did not want to be embarrassed by failing to live up to my own and others' expectations. I have not fallen over that particular hurdle again – I'm quite happy to admit I need help and to accept it.
And since then, I have been alert to the warning signs of stress. I know that I'm more vulnerable to pressure now – as if those two years wore down what resilience against stress I originally had. Losing my sense of humour is the first sign that I need to look closely at what I'm doing and make changes.
If you think you're suffering from serious stress, please seek help. Stress is not something you can just power through – at least, not without damaging yourself. And I'd like to see more understanding of those in seriously stressful situations.
Their stress levels will not be helped by advice from themselves or others to 'harden up' or by an exercise regime or healthy eating or any of the modern panaceas with which we think we can transform our lives. On the contrary, it's their circumstances that need attention along with support to make the necessary changes.
- First published in the Nelson Mail


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Twenty of the world's finest chainsaw artists will descend upon Libby next month for the Second Annual Kootenai Country Montana Chainsaw Carving Championship. The championship will be held on Mineral Avenue in downtown Libby from Sept. 21 until Sept. 23, 2018.
"We had a great time, and a fantastic community response, last year," said organizer Paul Bunn of Libby's Venture Inn. "We think it's a great way to show off the wonderful area in which we live while highlighting the rich heritage of timber and forestry."
For this year, the competition has been expanded from 15 to 20 entrants, with artists hailing from five different continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Last year's champion, Steven Higgins (Missouri), is returning to defend his title, along with second and third place finishers Mark Colp (California) and Joe Dussia (Pennsylvania), respectively.
Also returning to the competition are Montana carvers Todd Coats (Bigfork) and Les Smith (Cut Bank). Jacob Lucas (Washington), Josh Blewett (Oregon), and Hikaru Kodama (Japan) round out the slate of returning artists.
While certainly not new to carving, 12 new contestants will take the field in Libby this year. Two additional artists hailing from Pennsylvania, Dennis Beach and Dawna Ceriana, will be competing, along with Kentucky's Abby Peterson, Idaho's John Schulz, and Susan Miller of Oregon.
Five of the 2018 competitors come from Europe, although two of them now call America home. Tomas Vrba comes from Slovakia, but now lives and works in Bellingham, Wash. Alex Pricob, a native of Moldova, is traveling to Libby from Renton, Wash. John Hayes is coming from Waterford, Ireland, and Garry Shand is traveling from Drummuir, Scotland. The artist traveling the greatest distance to compete this year is Raimondas Uzdravis, "Raimis the Logger," from Kaunus, Lithuania.
Representing the African continent is Zimbabwe native Bongo Love. Love currently lives and works in Boulder, Colo. Rounding out the slate of international competitors is Adrian Bois, from Argentina.
"We have grown our international field this year, which is a testament to the popularity of this unique art form," Bunn said. "I think it's also a credit to the quality of the event we put on last year, that so many artists wanted to come back and compete again. The word is getting out, Libby is the place to be!"
In addition to expanding the field, organizers this year have added food and beverage service at the event site. The food court area, which will feature several local food trucks as well as three of the professional barbecue caterers who competed in this year's Bigfoot Barbecue, will be on Second Street, between Mineral and Montana avenues. The food court will also include a beer garden, courtesy of Libby's VFW Post 1548.
Like last year, the event will include one masterpiece carving from each artist. Each will start with one log, roughly eight feet tall and three feet in diameter. The artists are free to cut off pieces and reattach them as they see fit, but the masterpieces are limited to art created from the original log. Each artist will also complete three "quick-carve" pieces. These are pieces carved from smaller pieces of wood during the 90-minute quick-carve breaks scheduled during each morning of the competition.
(picture) Steven Higgins works on his championship piece during the 2017 Kootenai Country Montana Chainsaw Carving Championship. Photo courtesy of Bob Henline.
All of the quick-carve pieces will be available for purchase at the auctions scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday's auction, to be held at 2 p.m. on Mineral Avenue, will feature the quick-carve pieces produced Friday and Saturday. Sunday's quick-carve pieces will be auctioned at 1 p.m. Sunday. The masterpieces will be auctioned after the awards ceremony at 2 p.m. Sunday. The masterpiece works can be purchased during the carving, for those wanting to avoid the competition of an auction.
"We hope everyone is looking forward to this as much as we are," Bunn said. "It takes an entire community to pull off an event of this magnitude and we are very grateful to the people of Libby, the City Council, and the business community for their support. We couldn't do it without them."


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As head nutrition and supplement advisor here at Discount Supplements, it's imperative that I stay on top of current research and supplement developments from leading companies such as Reflex Nutrition. I would suggest that anybody actively taking nutritional supplements should be looking to further their knowledge and understanding of what they're putting into their bodies, and how it will benefit/ affect them. That's exactly why Reflex Nutrition are hosting this seminar, to keep you informed, demonstrate their commitment to product quality and development, as well as exhibiting their advanced sports supplement manufacturing facility.
The need to stay continually professionally developed is exactly why I'll be attending this seminar. With Mark Gilberts experience and expertise at the helm, as well as being hosted at the Reflex Nutrition Science Park, on the 28th November, 2014, why wouldn't people get along!?
The only stipulation Reflex Nutrition make is that delegates have a keen interest in sports nutrition, as well as a minimum of a Level 2 Fitness qualification. This is because a general understanding on healthy diet and nutrition is key to maximising the learning experience. Delegates must also be actively working or involved in the fitness industry, teaching, coaching or training.
If you meet this criteria then get on it now discount supplements…and I'll see you there!


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St. Nicholas Church Choir
Our choir rehearses on Tuesday evenings. Our choir members are actively involved in many of the church functions and also host events throughout the year. Our choir also attends and participates in concerts across the United States and Canada as part of the Serbian Singing Federation. Our choir has also represented our church in various non-denominational programs and performed for charitable causes.


text: In order to address the national backlog in processing sexual assault kits, a purified sample of male DNA must be selectively retrieved from a gynecological swab. Effective elution of the sample from the swab and efficient separation of intact sperm cells from epithelial cells and other debris allow for a successful polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and short tandem repeat (STR) analysis of the perpetrator DNA. An improved method to perform the cell separation boasts three major advantages over present technologies: small sample size allowing for multiple analysis of limited available evidence, rapid separation time compared to standard methods and single cell detection and collection. In this invention, sperm migrate in a confined band in less than 30 minutes. The sample is collected into individual wells on a well-plate. The isolated sample will then undergo PCR amplification and STR analysis for forensic identification.


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Local drivers shine in state competition
Whyalla had a big weekend of racing, as the Whyalla Kart Club held the first round of the 2 round State Title series. There were 79 drivers from around the country battling it out on track, some current state title holders as well as first time contenders. Practice began on Friday with Qualifying and Heats on Saturday and Sunday wrapped up with the last of the heats and finals. There were two local drivers that a worthy of special mention, Cooper Jones winning the KA3 Senior Lights and Brayden Stewart who came second in the KA4 Junior category. Both drivers have been invited to Race of Stars which is being held in Queensland later in the year. Whyalla Kart Club would not have been able to put on such a good event if it wasn't for our sponsors and volunteers, which we would like to thank. Our next race meeting will be held on Sunday 19th of August and would be a good chance for anyone interest in taking up motor racing, to come and speak with the drivers and club members.
Results of the Finals
Cadet 9
- 1 Rock Han
- 2 Jensen Marold
- 3 Riley Fortanier
Cadet 12
- 1 James Piszcyk
- 2 Ben Holliday
- 3 Jessica Fortanier
KA4 Junior Light
- 1 Christian Cowie
- 2 Brayden Stewart
- 3 Jedd Stanton
KA3 Junior
- 1 Kai Allen
- 2 Blake Purdie
- 3 Aaron Oliver
KA3 Senior Light
- 1 Cooper Jones
- 2 Jacob Baxter
- 3 Thomas Carrig
TaG 125 Restricted Light
- 1 James Boden
- 2 Hamish Fletcher
- 3 Aaron Gray
TaG 125 Restricted Medium
- 1 Daniel Boorman
- 2 Billy Westerveld
- 3 John Ellis
TaG 125 Light
- 1 Paul Pittam
- 2 Benjamin Redjepi
- 3 Matthew Hall
TaG 125 Heavy
- 1 Ben Edwards
- 2 Andrew Cash
- 3 Christopher Board


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Presented by
OBL 6/14: Minicamp recap with Sean McDermott and Lorenzo Alexander
Bills Insider Chris Brown gave us a live update from practice as the team wrapped minicamp. Bills head coach Sean McDermott recapped offseason work and was joined by Canisius MBB coach Reggie Witherspoon (1:18:45). Miami Herald columnist Armando Salguero updated us on the Dolphins and Ryan Tannehill (56:20). Bills LB Lorenzo Alexander joined us (1:39:00) and we discussed who was the Bills biggest offseason loss.