You are currently browsing the archives for June, 2008

TED makes public its archive of smart people

Posted on Monday, 30 June, 2008 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences held every other year, bring together interesting thinkers to share ideas on the present and future situation of just about everything. TED recently posted all its conference talks online, which has provided lots of diversion for yours truly. This one is from 2006 and one of my favorites.

File this one under Found while Trolling the Web | Tagged in , | 1 person said something

Americans still have beer goggles for Israel

Posted on Sunday, 29 June, 2008 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share

Marchers in New York\'s Salute to Israel Parade (AP)Many in the U.S. are still in the midst of a punch-drunk love fest with Israel as can be evidenced by the massive New York Parade attended by loads who have not actually been to the Holy Land themselves while Israeli expats themselves found the event grotesque enough to miss.

(Associated Press photo: Marchers in New York’s Salute to Israel Parade)

Here in London, we joined a group of Palestinian activists who headed over to the big zionist love-in at Trafalgar Square where they were quickly cordoned off into a side pen across the street from the nationalist event that looked like something the BNP might put on, but with slightly different iconography and color schemes. Six decades of land confiscation later and no plans to declare borders until it gets some more. So much to celebrate!

The coverage of the anti-occupation demonstration by the Associated Press seems based on the amount of space that London police allowed for protest.

Coming from the U.S., the sugar daddy bankrolling the continuing land grab, it just made me wonder when people are going to sober up and lose the beer goggles they seem to toss on every time they look toward the middle east. What will that “morning after” moment look like, when they wake up next to someone who has more in common with Apartheid-era South Africa than the sexy “democracy” they thought they had hooked up with. When they see that they’ve been supporting something akin to Jim Crow Laws and something that shares more in common with the sort of national spirit that shoved Native Americans to the point of extinction, that they’re hanging out with organizations like CUFI and  that have more in common with the fanatics they claim to loathe, maybe they’ll snap out of it.

Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe, is what the Palestinians call this anniversary Israel celebrates. Instead of the continuing fantasy that these celebrations seem to thrive on, I thought I’d thow up some links today of some sources where people can see what’s being wiped out.

Below: Yet another attack on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. This one had the startling difference from all the others in that is was reported by the BBC.

File this one under My Palestine crush | Tagged in , , | Now you say something

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