Time magazine readers chose Julian Assange as Person of the Year. Hands down. But Time's editors preferred to go with the safer choice: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The loser in this contest is Time. Hands down.
Just think about it. Facebook has been around for years now. It's a fabulous social networking tool, but there is nothing it accomplished in 2010 that wasn't accomplished in 2009. In the swirling pace of the tech world, Facebook is old news.
At least 10 Palestinians were invited to attend the event in northern Israel, where the four-day fire left 41 people dead and ravaged large swaths of forest.
But Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament and one of the organisers of the ceremony, said the event was cancelled when three of the Palestinians were refused entry permits to Israel on Tuesday.
He said the military had turned the firefighters away on security grounds.
"It's a theatre of the absurd," he told The Associated Press news agency. "This is a regular day-to-day practice of the occupation, and it exposes its ugly face."
"We planned on the film opening in December but in looking at the landscape of blandishment, conflict, and confusion, it felt like we needed to spend more time preparing the audience and psyche of our fellow world citizens for the film and that way somehow left Reula’s book dangling without a movie to support it, so I find myself reading…
"We’re actually going to show the film on March 15 before the General Assembly of the United Nations for 2000 people. That’s where the movie will open." There will be other screenings before that, the painter-cum-director said. It was at the Council on Foreign Relations last week, and will be at the 92d Street Y in February.
“We wanted to cuddle the world in some sort of way and form some kind of coalition and find some kind of post-right, post-left dialogue about this issue…. I guess you will see the movie some day. I hope you’ll see the movie."
Bil'in - Ramallah: Released by the Israeli Occupation Forces today from Ofer Prison is central activist Adeeb Abo Rahma (age 40) who is from the village of Bil'in, after being incarcerated for 18 months, and was suspending from participating in any political activity for a period of four years. Should Abo Rahma be caught within this period, he will be fined 6,000 NIS on charges of incitement and obstructing the work of the army as well as conducting peaceful demonstrations against the Wall in Bil'in.The military court in Ofer finally sentenced the activist Adeeb Abo Rahma on August 30, 2010, but the ruling prosecutors hinted that he might be relieved of his political suspension between six and twelve months. The activist Adeeb Abo Rahma was arrested on July 10, 2009 during his participation in Bilin weekly demonstration.
US shielded war-time collaborators to try to destabilise Soviet Union
By Cristian Salazar and Randy Herschaft in New York
Declassified CIA files have revealed that US intelligence officials went to great lengths to protect a Ukrainian fascist leader and suspected Nazi collaborator from prosecution after the Second World War and used him to stir up trouble inside the Soviet Union from an office in New York.
Mykola Lebed led an underground movement to undermine the Kremlin and wage guerrilla operations for the CIA during the Cold War, said a report prepared by two scholars under the supervision of the US National Archives. During the Second World War, Lebed helped to lead a Ukrainian nationalist organization that collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of the Jews of the western Ukraine and also killed thousands of Poles. The report details post-war efforts by US intelligence officials to throw the federal government's Nazi hunters off his trail and to ignore or obscure his past.
Read more-The Independent
Always use the word ‘Sand’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Whispers’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Islam’, ‘Jihad’, ‘Desert’, ‘Dawn’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Oil’, ‘Orient’, ‘Arabia’, ‘Calling’, ‘Veil’, ‘Allah’ or ‘Anger’. Also useful are words such as ‘Terrorists’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Fundamentalism’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that you must always refer to Arab people as the “Arab Street”.
Under no circumstances should you have a picture of a well-adjusted Arab on the cover of your book, or in it; sometimes you may make mention of certain well-rounded Arabs, but only to highlight their differences with the West. An AK-47, a mosque, and the desert: use these. If you must include an Arab, make sure you get one in a veil or burning an American or Israeli flag.
In your text, treat the Middle East as if it were one country, and constantly refer to it as ‘Arabia’. It is hot and dusty with rolling sand dunes and huge herds of camels, because they are the only animals that are strong enough to live in such a harsh climate. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. The Middle East is big: twenty-two countries, 300 million people who are too busy fighting and dying and warring and bombing themselves to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions mysterious and exotic and unparticular. Also, make sure that you mention that Turkey, Iran or Afghanistan are not Arab countries, but then continue to refer to them as if they were. Because, although you are worldly and realize the differences, they all sort of look the same so it doesn’t matter.
Read more-Kabobfest
Rula Jebreal is the subject of Julian Schnabel's new film, Miral
By chance, I read the text of Mortier's short but eloquent speech this week, a day before watching Julian Schnabel's new movie Miral, a feature film which follows the life of Rula Jebreal, a real-life Palestinian-Israeli woman who became a journalist, author and television presenter. Schnabel, who is Jewish, lives with Jebreal in New York. Their movie begins and ends with the death of Hind Husseini, a remarkable and courageous Palestinian woman who found orphans from the Jewish massacre of Arab villagers at Deir Yassin in 1948 and started a boarding school for girls that still exists in Jerusalem. Husseini died in 1994, but Rula was one of her pupils. Her childhood – losing her mother, choosing to be a well-educated woman, sucked into the intifada, arrested and brutalised by the Israelis – is the story of Miral.
And more about Rula Jebreal here
( wow! Now I feel like I have a crush just looking at a photo!)
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