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Hostile Intelligence: Reflections from a Visit to the West Bank
Posted on 30 July, 2015 by Editor
In Nablus, every street seems to have a men's hair salon. There are literally thousands of them. Most stay open until at least 2 at night; often other than mosques they're the only places lit up and open at two at night; and it seems any time you pass by one, there are likely to be four or five nicely coiffed young men clustered inside, watching someone get a haircut. The odd thing is that women's hair salons seem entirely absent. Occasionally you do see impressive posters for women's cosmetics and hair products; often, the women are blonde (and a surprising number of Palestinians in Nablus are, in fact, blonde; even children), but the shops are absent. I asked a friend why this was. He explained that while Palestinian society was traditionally considered the most liberal Arab society outside of Beirut, and young women never used to go with their hair covered, things started to change in the '90s with the political rise of Hamas. But in the case of women's hair salons, there was another, much more immediate factor. During the '80s, Israeli intelligence agents began taking advantage of their existence to spike the sweet tea with knock-out drugs, and take nude pictures of women so as to blackmail their husbands into turning collaborator or informant. So now women's salons exist, but they're not visible from the street, and women no longer take tea from strangers.
My first reaction on hearing the story was: Did this really happen? It sounds like the very definition of a paranoid fantasy. But Palestinians in Nablus are living in an environment where insane things do happen; where there actually are people conspiring against them; spies, informants, security forces of a dozen varieties including many with advanced degrees in psychology and social theory do exist and are actively trying to come up with ways to destroy social trust and tear apart the fabric of society. Innumerable stories circulate. Only some are true. How can anyone possibly know which?
And of course that's always half the point in such situations. The Stasi, the East German secret police, at one point developed a technique of breaking into dissidents' homes at night and rearranging their furniture. Doing it left the victim in an impossible situation. Either you tell people that spies broke into your house and rearranged your furniture, leaving many with the impression you are insane, or keep the information to yourself, and gradually begin to doubt your own sanity. Sometimes, in Palestine, you feel you're in an entire country that's been given such treatment.
In this case, however, the rumor turns out to be at least partly true. Someone put up a web page for Mossad agents with guilty consciences to make anonymous confessions. And one did, indeed, make reference to drugging the tea in hair salons.
My friend Amin said: "I've always felt that the turn to religious conservatism, the headscarves, the covering up—it's not just the political rise of Hamas in the '80s and '90s. I think it's partly a reaction to the fact that you always know that people are staring at you. I mean look around. Practically every other hill, there's a Jewish settlement. But you look up and it's just architecture, the blank face of some pre-designed gated community, you can't see the people. And next to that there's always a military base, fenced, with towers which may or may not have someone gazing out at you. And then there's the actual wall. Everybody talks about the wall as being an impediment to movement. And it is that, and it's incredibly annoying, but the other thing about the wall is, it's an impediment to vision. You can never see what's going on right next to you. They have their own roads. Actually they have two sets of roads: there are settler roads. Then there are the military roads. You can't really see either from roads we Arabs get to use. Just glimpses here and there, or there are spots where you cross the road to a settlement, and there are guards and posters for right-wing Israeli politicians and kids wearing yarmulke's hitchhiking. But other than that you never see them. But you know they can see you when you're driving, or walking, or whatever you're doing they're starting at you from a thousand different angles from places you don't even know about. You're trapped in these little pockets where you can see each other but you never get the panoptic view, there's a little chunk of city you live in, a little chunk of country where you take your sheep, these discontinuous islands; you don't even have a proper map, the maps you get to use are wrong or out of date, you never get to look down from the commanding heights. So you start covering up. You don't go out so much. Women hide their hairstyles, even. It's just a gesture, but it's one tiny way of asserting control."
This what it feels like, to live in Palestine. The constant awareness of the existence of a ferocious, hostile intelligence that is organizing the terms of one's existence, but which, ultimately, does not wish one well. One never sees them. But one knows what they must be like: a brain trust of extremely well educated and sophisticated men and women meeting in air-conditioned offices, presenting power-points, tabulating research, and developing sophisticated plans and scenarios; except, all you know is that these people are utterly inimical to your existence, and you have no idea what they say and do. You can only grasp at rumors and analogies.
The North Korean regime in the '50s developed a series of remarkably effective torture techniques, techniques that were so effective, in fact, that they were able to make captured American airmen admit to all sorts of atrocities they had not in fact committed, all the time, being convinced they had not, actually, been tortured. The techniques were quite simple. Just make the victim do something mildly uncomfortable—sit on the edge of chair, for example, or lean against a wall in a slightly awkward position—only, make them do it for an extremely long period of time. After eight hours the victim would be willing to do virtually anything to make it stop. But try going to the International Court of Justice at The Hague and tell them you've been made to sit on the edge of a chair all day. Even the victims were unwilling to describe their captors as torturers. When the CIA learned about these techniques—according to Korean friends of mine, they're actually just particularly sadistic versions of classic Korean ways of punishing small children—they were intrigued, and, apparently, conducted extensive research on how they could be adopted for their own detention centers.
Again, sometimes, in Palestine, one feels one is in an entire country that's being treated this way. Obviously, there is also outright torture, people who are actually being shot, beaten, tortured, or violently abused. But I'm speaking here even of the ones that aren't. For most, it's as if the very texture of everyday life has been designed to be intolerable—only, in a way that you can never quite say is exactly a human rights violation. There's never enough water. Showering requires almost military discipline. You can't get a permit. You're always standing in line. If something breaks it's impossible to get permission to fix it. Or else you can't get spare parts. There are four different bodies of law that might apply to any legal situation (Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli), it's anyone's guess which court will say what applies where, or what document is required, or acceptable. Most rules are not even supposed to make sense. It can take eight hours to drive 20 kilometers to see your girlfriend, and doing so will almost certainly mean having machine guns waved in your faces and being shouted at in a language you half understand by people who think you're subhuman. So you do most of your dalliance by phone. When you can afford the minutes. There are endless traffic jams before and after checkpoints and drivers bicker and curse and try not to take it out on one another. Everyone lives no more than 12 or 15 miles from the Mediterranean but even on the hottest day, it's absolutely impossible to get to the beach. Unless you climb the wall, there are places you can do that; but then you can expect to be hunted every moment by security patrols. Of course teenagers do it anyway. But it means swimming is always accompanied by the fear of being shot. If you're a trader, or a laborer, or a driver, or a tobacco farmer, or clerk, the very process of subsistence is continual stream of minor humiliations. Your tomatoes are held and left two days to rot while someone grins at you. You have to beg to get your child out of detention. And if you do go to beseech the guards, those same guards might arbitrarily decide to hold you to pressure him to confess to rock-throwing, and suddenly you are in a concrete cell without cigarettes. Your toilet backs up. And you realize: you're going to have to live like this forever. There is no "political process." It will never end. Barring some kind of divine intervention, you can expect to be facing exactly this sort of terror and absurdity for the rest of your natural life.
But when someone does snap under the pressure, and, say, stabs a soldier at a checkpoint, or joins a cell to shoot at settlers, there's no one specific act one can point to that seems to justify what seems like an act of disproportionate madness.
Palestine was, after all, the land that produced Gnosticism—the belief that human beings lived in a universe created by a hostile Demiurge, full of arbitrary moral regulations which exist only to bewilder and demoralize us, because the real God is in some absolute, unknowable Elsewhere. But what possible reason would a political regime have to try to consciously create a system of rule that actually brought a simulation of such a corrupt and meaningless universe into being?
The strategy seems especially puzzling because even from the Israeli point of view, it's impossible to figure out the logic. Back in the '90s, had the opportunity to peace with its neighbors. The terms offered were extremely advantageous, both economically and politically. No one was even really expecting Israel to allow any significant number of the '48 refugees to return; all it would have taken was the clearing out of what were then a handful of settlements inhabited by what most Israeli citizens then considered to be violent religious lunatics, and handing the PLO some kind of toothless rump state. Instead Israeli governments have used the diplomatic cover of a two-state solution—a solution nobody now believes could ever possibly happen, even as hundreds of lucrative bureaucratic careers have been created under the pretense that it will—to turn the West Bank into a maze of military bases and Jewish-only planned communities, condemned by almost every country on earth as illegal under international law. It is extremely difficult to imagine how this project will not, ultimately, lead to catastrophe. Already it has transformed the image of the country in most of the world from a group of idealistic holocaust survivors making the desert bloom, into a collection of snarling bigots who have made a science out of techniques for brutalizing 12-year-olds. They have ensured they will remain a nation surrounded by bitter enemies, even as economically and politically, they have become almost entirely dependent on the unquestioning support a single rapidly declining imperial power.
How could this possibly end well?
So: what is the Israeli long-term strategy, really?
Insofar as there's an answer, it seems to be that they simply don't have one; the Israeli government no more has a long-term strategy for dealing with their future in the region than Exxon Mobil has a long-term strategy for dealing with climate change. They seem to just figure that, if US power does collapse or give up on them, something will turn up. No doubt too they have people in thinktanks brainstorming that, too, coming with reports and scenarios, but all this is basically an afterthought. The driving force behind the colonization of '67 Palestine is not any sort of grand strategy; it's a kind of terrible confluence of short-term political and economic advantage.
First, the settlements. They were originally the project of a relatively isolated, if well funded, collection of religious zealots. Now everything seems to be organized around them. The government pours in endless resources. Why? The answer seems to be that since at least the '90s, rightwing politicians in Israel have figured out that the settlements are a kind of political magic. The more money gets funneled into them, the more the Jewish electorate turns to the Right. The reason is simple. Israel is expensive. Housing inside the 1948 boundaries is exorbitantly expensive. If you are a young person without means, you increasingly has two options: to live with one's parents until well into your 30s, or find a place in an illegal settlement, where apartments cost perhaps a third of what they would in Haifa or Tel Aviv—and that's not to mention the superior roads, schools, utilities, and social services. At this point the vast majority of settlers live on the West Bank for economic, not ideological, reasons. (This is especially true around Jerusalem.) But consider who these people are. In the past, young people in difficult circumstances, students, well-educated young parents, have been the traditional constituency of the Left. Put these same people in a settlement, and they will, inexorably, even without realizing it, begin to think like fascists. Settlements are, in their own way, giant engines for the production of right-wing consciousness. It is very difficult for someone placed in hostile territory, given training in automatic weapons and warned to be constantly on one's guard against a local population seething over the fact that your next-door neighbors have been killing their sheep and destroying their olive trees, not to gradually see ethno-nationalism as common sense. As a result, with every election, the old Left electorate further dissipates, and a host of religious, fascist, or semi-fascist parties win a larger and larger stake of the vote. For politicians, who can barely think past the next election, the lure is inescapable.
But what of the policies towards the Palestinians? How does that make any sort of sense?
Again, it's important to underline that the people designing Israeli policy in the West Bank are anything but idiots. Most are clearly extremely intelligent. Large proportions have advanced degrees, and are very well read in the history and sociology of military rule and the science of civil governance. They are well aware of the techniques that have been successfully applied by occupying powers in the past aiming to pacify and coopt a conquered population. It isn't rocket science. There's a standard playbook: cooptation, divide and rule, a certain carefully nuanced balance of carrot and stick, the application of certain strategies for the creation of dependencies and mixed allegiances… And it's not as if those developing Israeli strategy don't apply these techniques. But they seem determined to offer as small a carrot, and wield as large a stick, as they possibly can without sparking a major conflagration. The old PLO leadership, the political cream of the Palestinian diaspora, had indeed been coopted: it was allowed it's own small-scale right of return from their former bases in Lebanon or North Africa, and granted special privileges in exchange for agreeing to help police the Arab population. They in turn organized incoming aid money in such a way to absorb former leftist radicals into NGOs. A few rich Arab businessmen do move back and forth freely across checkpoints and make lucrative housing deals. There's even a minor housing bubble, as money pours in from doctors and lawyers the diaspora to relatives with nothing to spend it on, with the result that endless great cement mansions with red Chinese roofs pop up in areas under the Palestinian authority, only, mansions whose toilets still don't really work properly for lack of water. (All the water, needless to say, is going to the settlers' swimming pools.) The territories are, ironically, Israel's biggest export market, and since they've largely destroyed the old agricultural, trade, and light industrial economy through hostile "regulations," what this basically means is seizing their cut of Palestinian remittance money by any means available. Still, what's really remarkable about these divide-and-rule strategies is how little of it there really is. Economically, it would be extremely easy to create a sizeable middle class with a strong economic interest in cooperation with the occupation authorities. Yet the authorities seem to have intentionally decided not to do this.
Instead I think we have to ask the same question as we did with the settlements. Settlements are engines for the production of a certain kind of ethno-nationalist consciousness, funded basically for political advantage. What sort of Palestinians, then, are the occupation authorities trying to create? Clearly not docile and obedient ones. There would be no reason to engineer a life of continual hardship, terror, and humiliation—to ensure, for instance that practically every Palestinian mother and father has to worry if their 12-year-old son or daughter will come home safely from school, or is already lying shackled and blindfolded in a concrete cell—if one were trying to pacify a former enemy. The only answer that makes sense is that the Israel forces want the Palestinians to seethe; they want there to be resistance; but the also want to ensure that political resistance is completely ineffective. They want a population that is compliant on a day-to-day basis, but that periodically explodes, individually or collectively, in a unstrategic and uncoordinated fashion that can represented to the outside world as irrational demonic madness.
And why would they wish to do this? Almost every Arab political analyst I talked to considered the answer self-evident. Israel's economy has become largely dependent on the high-tech arms trade, and the supply of complex electronic "security" systems. Israel is today the world's fourth largest arms exporter, after the US, Russia, and UK (it has recently pushed back France to #5). This is actually quite a feat for such a tiny country. But as everyone also hastens to add: Israeli arms and security systems have an enormous advantage over their rivals, one Israeli firms never fail to emphasize in their promotional literature. They are extensively field-tested. This new type of shell that was used to destroy tunnels in Gaza! This new type of random-distribution tear gas dispenser was successfully used against protestors in the Balata refugee camp. This new type of laser-detection device has repeatedly foiled attacks on settlers. Arab resistance has become a key economic resource for Israeli capital, and were it to completely quiet down, the export economy would take an immediate hit.
If bullying is to be defined as, in its essence, a form of aggression designed to produce a reaction that can then be used as retroactive justification for the initial act of aggression itself, then the Israeli Occupation has taken bullying and turned it into a principle of governance. Everything is designed to provoke. The provocations are daily. They are ugly and humiliating. But they are also designed to fly just under the point of flagrant, undeniable aggression, where you can claim they were not even, precisely, an "attack," but like the schoolyard bully who's constantly subtly poking and jabbing and kicking his victim, hoping for some outraged burst of ineffective rage that can get the victim hauled before the principal.
I only came to fully understand the agony of the Palestinian situation when I came to understand that the entire point of life, in traditional Palestinian society, is put oneself in a position where you can be generous to strangers. Hospitality is everything. When I first entered Nablus, in a van full of an American film crew, everyone in the neighborhood we entered (of course I only learned this later) immediately began pulling out cell phones to try to figure out what was going on. Who were these foreigners? What kind of equipment were they carrying? Why were they here? The moment we entered a local home everything was different. A neighborhood committee quickly assembled a group of 30 or 40 young volunteers who pledged to physically intervene if corrupt elements of the Palestinian authority, or Israeli security forces, tried to give us any trouble. After all, we were now somebody's houseguest, and our security was a matter of the neighborhood's collective honour.
Of course we had no idea this was happening at the time. We only found out a week later, when someone mentioned it to Amin in a casual aside.
One of the film crew's first trip was to Arraba, an agricultural town whose center is full of posters and black flags of Islamic Jihad and the remains of Medieval mosques and forts. At first it sometimes seemed as if people were trying to avoid us, the houses were mostly shuttered, but eventually we realized, that was just because the sun had not yet set: it was Ramadan and people were embarrassed to receive visitors if they were unable to offer them food. By dusk it seemed like everywhere we went we were regaled with lamb, pastries and sage tea. Old women in headscarves endlessly refilled our glasses as they sat on patios telling stories of how archeologists had discovered the graves of some kind of ancient Jewish leaders—I didn't catch the names, I think they might have been Maccabees—and since then, the tombs had been declared a place of pilgrimage. Normally, of course, the discovery of such a site is an economic windfall for the community. In Palestine, it might mean an entire village is simply expelled. Arraba was too big for that. So in this case it merely meant that periodically, hundreds of Israeli soldiers would sweep into town in full battle gear, snipers would position themselves on rooftops, and there would be a 12-hour curfew as religious settlers marched in to carry out commemorative rituals. And then they'd go away.
Then they started telling the stories of various children of the village currently in prison for conspiring to ambush settlers.
It was at the moment it suddenly occurred to me—someone who had grown up in a Jewish family in New York fed almost entirely on Zionist propaganda—exactly what things must look like from the other side. Wherever we went, Palestinians would tell us about all the different sorts of people they had historically welcomed to the Holy Land: Armenians, Greeks, Persians, Russians, Africans, Jews… They saw the Zionists as originally their house-guests. Yet they were the worst house-guests one could possibly imagine. Every act of hospitality, of welcome, is turned into license for appropriation, and the world's most skillful propagandists leapt into action to try to convince the world that their hosts were depraved inhuman monsters who had no right to their own homes. In such a situation, what can you possibly do? Stop being generous? But then one is absolutely, existentially defeated. This is what people really meant when they talked about a life of calculated degradation. People were being systematically deprived of the physical, the economic, and the political means to be magnanimous. And to be deprived of the means to make that kind of magnificent gesture is a kind of living death.
This entry was posted on 30 July, 2015 in homepage and tagged David Graeber, Exxon Mobile, Gaza, Gnosticism, hair salons, Inequality, Israel, Israeli occupation, Mossad, OIL, palestine, persecution, PLO, The West Bank, womens rights. Bookmark the permalink.
42 Responses to Hostile Intelligence: Reflections from a Visit to the West Bank
incredible piece. Thank you for sharing it.
Comment by Kyle Stone on 30 July, 2015 at 3:31 am
Fine,humane, balanced,enlightening analysis. The implications are that not only is Israel a microcosm of global-power conflict dynamics, but it is also a development laboratory for military/security repressive equipment and techniques and one providing data for all governments to use in shaping and controlling their societies and in crushing dissent.
Comment by Charlie Grafton on 30 July, 2015 at 6:22 am
[…] source by David Graeber […]
Pingback by David Graeber Reflects on Visiting the West Bank - iamronen on 30 July, 2015 at 5:10 pm
*Evidence that Graeber is much better at tourist writing than at sociology: That stab at analysis of the Palestinian lifeway in the trendy theoretical terms of Social Death in the last line trivializes the easygoing atmosphere he did so well at establishing during the entire essay up to that point.
Comment by Mark Ajita on 30 July, 2015 at 7:59 pm
Actually I just said "living death" which was just a metaphor, and not a reference to the concept of social death.
For my actual views on the notion of social death, check Debt: The First 5000 Years, Chapter 7 ("Honour and Degradation"), and particularly pp. 168-171 ("Honour as Surplus Dignity.")
Comment by David Graeber on 31 July, 2015 at 1:19 am
I like the piece, but I have to agree, the last couple of paragraphs def feels like the writer is trivializing.
Comment by Suzanne on 2 August, 2015 at 7:54 pm
It is the bitter humor of the hopeless. It is common among Palestinians and is the last outpost before futile hatred and foolishness.
Comment by jonabark on 26 September, 2015 at 2:16 am
Powerful stuff. In case any readers aren't familiar another "function" of Israel to the US security state was as an indirect way to arm dictatorships that Congress put any kind of obstacle towards arming directly.
Dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador, apartheid South Africa, Pinochet (a literal Nazi sympathizer, no problem!), Somoza, and a broad assortment of brutal and corrupt African tyrants.
These owed their continued existence to Israeli arms. The US pushed for these deals behind the scenes.
Comment by lcl on 31 July, 2015 at 12:12 am
A brilliant and timely piece. It describes exactly the auto-deluded state of Israeli society as well as it enables the reader to feel what it is like to be the victim of such a society's warped mechanisms. Where will such a predatory and victim-hungry society turn, if there are no more victims? Will they start consuming themselves, like survivors of a shipwreck? Or will they turn their attentions outwards and nuke the neighbours? Israel is the most disassociated and damned state on earth, right now and holding a mirror up to it, as this piece has done, could show it what a degenerate fiend it has become and hopefully start the process, for the many silenced, humane and caring Israelis, of doing something about it.
Comment by genevieve on 1 August, 2015 at 11:39 am
Hi Genevieve… Many "silenced, humane and caring" Israelis — thank you for that! — are, and have been, doing things about it. With little enough result so far. Do you have specific, concrete suggestions? Please share them…
Comment by Deb Reich on 23 August, 2015 at 1:55 pm
Several points i'd like to make.
1. You do not cover the other half of the problem that the Palestinian society is not doing enough for itself. Its not constructive.
2. There some very good relations between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. Thats also a piece of the puzzle.
3.Im not saying the tea story isn't true. However i find it hard to believe that it is the reason that you didn't see any women hairdressers. I find the way you deal with that point as very weak journalism.
I think that the general point of hardships of life in the west bank is important and true however your analysis is very biased a bit demonising and does not capture many complexities of the situation
Comment by Ehud on 1 August, 2015 at 10:22 pm
Yes, all those important "complexities" so long known to colonialist enterprises. Just because so many children are "a bit" dead.
thats the bad shit the right are creating around the world. social engineering through coercion and resulting frustration n fear. that doesnt excuse whats happening, thats reason to do something about that. we need to flood Israel with quality acid, people need to question how they live, and acid has been scientificaly shown to do that.
Comment by Ben B on 2 August, 2015 at 11:07 am
Dear Ehud
With regard to your point on "Palestinian society is not doing enough for itself" you are conveniently forgetting that all of the West Bank is under a violent and oppressive occupation that stifles any kind of development. I have lived with Palestinians under this occupation and it is not designed to make life easy for Palestinians at any point. israel deliberately undermines any kind of Palestinian development at every step. There is a deeply asymmetrical power relation at work here that your point misses completely.
Then, David, I applaud you for your analysis of what I have also experienced while living and working on the occupied West Bank of Palestine. israel's constant, violent and conniving undermining of Palestinian life is often too fantastically (and deliberately so) evil; it has been deliberately designed as such to make it easy for the Palestinian narrative to be dismissed as unbelievable. I do find, though, that you have not gone into the fact that much of this violence against Palestinians is about land appropriation at any cost. Much, if not all, of israel's action is driven by this.
Comment by Fatima G on 2 August, 2015 at 1:13 pm
that's true, I guess I should have emphasised the slow-motion ethnic cleansing and land grab element more
Comment by David Graeber on 2 August, 2015 at 10:54 pm
I believe there's an ethnic, anthropologic angle to Israelis' long-term strategy, too. It's probably conscious to some extent. We – speaking as part of this collective, even if not party to most of its accepted views – Israeli Jews, especially of Western backgrounds, expect the Palestinians to do what we did in similar circumstances for thousands of years: emigrate. Jews didn't fight, they migrated, from one place that was considered exile to another. I think that at some level people here cannot help but believe that if things are that miserable, at some point the Palestinians will finally pick up and leave.
Comment by Rena Kessem on 3 August, 2015 at 4:31 am
To leave where to?…
Comment by Sabine Goetz on 13 August, 2015 at 9:50 pm
"Someone put up a web page for Mossad agents with guilty consciences to make anonymous confessions. And one did, indeed, make reference to drugging the tea in hair salons"
So your proof that this implausible story occurred is a complete lack of proof in that you have no idea who this individual poster was, or if he or she was even Israeli. An anonymous post on a propaganda blog isn't proof.
Comment by Ari on 8 August, 2015 at 7:53 am
it was in here somewhere: http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/publications
judge for yourself
Comment by David Graeber on 9 August, 2015 at 3:39 pm
how about the general's son, Miko Peled? he's not really anonymous, is he
Comment by bincol on 6 October, 2015 at 4:20 am
I love the conclusion – would make a hilarious tragic comedy. It even makes sense, in a way. Being stupidly nice to guests is something I can see Palestinians do, even to this level.
Comment by Roba on 11 August, 2015 at 7:54 am
The story of David miss the Palestinian popular non armed struggle which include as partner the mainly anti Zionist Israelis of the really radical left.
Comment by ilan shalif on 11 August, 2015 at 8:44 am
yes there's a lot of things I don't talk about
Comment by David Graeber on 18 August, 2015 at 3:10 pm
You write that Palestinians throughout the ages have welcomed as guests various peoples, some of whom go back to antiquity. Are you claiming that the people presently called Palestinians were the aboriginal inhabitants of what is currently Israel/Palestine?
If so, please offer scientifically and internationally accepted proof. Citations, please, not just unsubstantiated Palestinian political lore.
Comment by Ira Rifkin on 22 August, 2015 at 9:42 pm
perfect illustration of my point in the text
"Yet they were the worst house-guests one could possibly imagine. Every act of hospitality, of welcome, is turned into license for appropriation, and the world's most skillful propagandists leapt into action to try to convince the world that their hosts were depraved inhuman monsters who had no right to their own homes."
As if anyone could produce "scientific" proof that Jewish settlers bear any meaningful relation to people who lived there two thousand years ago.
Comment by David Graeber on 30 August, 2015 at 11:40 am
"..who lived there 2000 years ago" And left voluntarily as shown in the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand's " The Invention of the Jewish People" in which he shows that there was no forcible expulsion of Jews from Israel.
Should Israel continue to maintain settlements in the West Bank until a solution is agreed to by both sides?
I don't accept the premise of your question, that there will ever be a two-state solution. That ship sailed about 20 years ago. However, I don't believe the solution is to dismantle the settlements, either. The solution is to treat Palestinians with…
Trackback by Quora on 21 September, 2015 at 5:04 pm
A powerful set of observations. Thank you for the essay.
Comment by Kathleen Lowrey on 26 September, 2015 at 4:46 am
Best piece I have read on what occupation really means. Thank you.
Comment by David G. on 27 September, 2015 at 7:09 am
[…] Hostile intelligence: Reflections from a visit to the West Bank / David Graeber International Times 20 July 2015 — . . . . For most, it's as if the very texture of everyday life has been designed to be intolerable — only, in a way that you can never quite say is exactly a human rights violation. There's never enough water. Showering requires almost military discipline. You can't get a permit. You're always standing in line. If something breaks it's impossible to get permission to fix it. Or else you can't get spare parts. There are four different bodies of law that might apply to any legal situation (Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli), it's anyone's guess which court will say what applies where, or what document is required, or acceptable. Most rules are not even supposed to make sense. It can take eight hours to drive 20 kilometers to see your girlfriend, and doing so will almost certainly mean having machine guns waved in your faces and being shouted at in a language you half understand by people who think you're subhuman. So you do most of your dalliance by phone. When you can afford the minutes. There are endless traffic jams before and after checkpoints and drivers bicker and curse and try not to take it out on one another. Everyone lives no more than 12 or 15 miles from the Mediterranean but even on the hottest day, it's absolutely impossible to get to the beach. Unless you climb the wall, there are places you can do that; but then you can expect to be hunted every moment by security patrols. Of course teenagers do it anyway. But it means swimming is always accompanied by the fear of being shot. If you're a trader, or a laborer, or a driver, or a tobacco farmer, or clerk, the very process of subsistence is continual stream of minor humiliations. Your tomatoes are held and left two days to rot while someone grins at you. You have to beg to get your child out of detention. And if you do go to beseech the guards, those same guards might arbitrarily decide to hold you to pressure him to confess to rock-throwing, and suddenly you are in a concrete cell without cigarettes. Your toilet backs up. And you realize: you're going to have to live like this forever. There is no "political process." It will never end. Barring some kind of divine intervention, you can expect to be facing exactly this sort of terror and absurdity for the rest of your natural life. But when someone does snap under the pressure, and, say, stabs a soldier at a checkpoint, or joins a cell to shoot at settlers, there's no one specific act one can point to that seems to justify what seems like an act of disproportionate madness . . . But what of the policies towards the Palestinians? How does that make any sort of sense? . . . The only answer that makes sense is that the Israel forces want the Palestinians to seethe; they want there to be resistance; but they also want to ensure that political resistance is completely ineffective. They want a population that is compliant on a day-to-day basis, but that periodically explodes, individually or collectively, in an unstrategic and uncoordinated fashion that can represented to the outside world as irrational demonic madness. And why would they wish to do this? Almost every Arab political analyst I talked to considered the answer self-evident. Israel's economy has become largely dependent on the high-tech arms trade, and the supply of complex electronic "security" systems. Israel is today the world's fourth largest arms exporter, after the US, Russia, and UK (it has recently pushed back France to #5). This is actually quite a feat for such a tiny country. But as everyone also hastens to add: Israeli arms and security systems have an enormous advantage over their rivals, one Israeli firms never fail to emphasize in their promotional literature. They are extensively field-tested. This new type of shell that was used to destroy tunnels in Gaza! This new type of random-distribution tear gas dispenser was successfully used against protesters in the Balata refugee camp . . . . https://internationaltimes.it/hostile-intelligence-reflections-from-a-visit-to-the-west-bank/ — […]
Pingback by Today in Palestine! ~ Sunday, 27 September 2015 ~ | MasterAdrian's Weblog on 28 September, 2015 at 11:59 am
heartbreaking…. You managed to capture the essence of what I try to explain to my friends when I talk about Palestine with friends and family. Their hospitality and their focus on survival are tied together. It's their essence also, what they have left. Thank you for that. Only kind hearts and open minds have the ability to really see what's in front of their eyes.
Comment by Ana on 28 September, 2015 at 1:40 pm
[…] Hostile intelligence: Reflections from a visit to the West Bank / David Graeber International Times 20 July 2015 — . . . . For most, it's as if the very texture of everyday life has been designed to be intolerable — only, in a way that you can never quite say is exactly a human rights violation. There's never enough water. Showering requires almost military discipline. You can't get a permit. You're always standing in line. If something breaks it's impossible to get permission to fix it. Or else you can't get spare parts. There are four different bodies of law that might apply to any legal situation (Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli), it's anyone's guess which court will say what applies where, or what document is required, or acceptable. Most rules are not even supposed to make sense. It can take eight hours to drive 20 kilometers to see your girlfriend, and doing so will almost certainly mean having machine guns waved in your faces and being shouted at in a language you half understand by people who think you're subhuman. So you do most of your dalliance by phone. When you can afford the minutes. There are endless traffic jams before and after checkpoints and drivers bicker and curse and try not to take it out on one another. Everyone lives no more than 12 or 15 miles from the Mediterranean but even on the hottest day, it's absolutely impossible to get to the beach. Unless you climb the wall, there are places you can do that; but then you can expect to be hunted every moment by security patrols. Of course teenagers do it anyway. But it means swimming is always accompanied by the fear of being shot. If you're a trader, or a laborer, or a driver, or a tobacco farmer, or clerk, the very process of subsistence is continual stream of minor humiliations. Your tomatoes are held and left two days to rot while someone grins at you. You have to beg to get your child out of detention. And if you do go to beseech the guards, those same guards might arbitrarily decide to hold you to pressure him to confess to rock-throwing, and suddenly you are in a concrete cell without cigarettes. Your toilet backs up. And you realize: you're going to have to live like this forever. There is no "political process." It will never end. Barring some kind of divine intervention, you can expect to be facing exactly this sort of terror and absurdity for the rest of your natural life. But when someone does snap under the pressure, and, say, stabs a soldier at a checkpoint, or joins a cell to shoot at settlers, there's no one specific act one can point to that seems to justify what seems like an act of disproportionate madness . . . But what of the policies towards the Palestinians? How does that make any sort of sense? . . . The only answer that makes sense is that the Israel forces want the Palestinians to seethe; they want there to be resistance; but they also want to ensure that political resistance is completely ineffective. They want a population that is compliant on a day-to-day basis, but that periodically explodes, individually or collectively, in an unstrategic and uncoordinated fashion that can represented to the outside world as irrational demonic madness. And why would they wish to do this? Almost every Arab political analyst I talked to considered the answer self-evident. Israel's economy has become largely dependent on the high-tech arms trade, and the supply of complex electronic "security" systems. Israel is today the world's fourth largest arms exporter, after the US, Russia, and UK (it has recently pushed back France to #5). This is actually quite a feat for such a tiny country. But as everyone also hastens to add: Israeli arms and security systems have an enormous advantage over their rivals, one Israeli firms never fail to emphasize in their promotional literature. They are extensively field-tested. This new type of shell that was used to destroy tunnels in Gaza! This new type of random-distribution tear gas dispenser was successfully used against protesters in the Balata refugee camp . . . . https://internationaltimes.it/hostile-intelligence-reflections-from-a-visit-to-the-west-bank/ […]
Pingback by Wanted: The killer of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun – Mondoweiss on 28 September, 2015 at 2:01 pm
All of the countries in the Middle East have become more socially conservative over the past 40 years. The famous example is the pictures of the graduates of the University of Cairo over the years where 40 years ago all the female graduates had their hair uncovered and in Western clothing and over the years they gradually start to appear with their hair covered until in the last few years they are all covered up. To blame Israel for such an outcome which is common in pretty much all Middle Eastern Muslim countries is pretty lazy journalism.
Secondly the economic and political failures of the Palestinian Authority are primarily the result of the mismanagement of the economy due to adopting the social/economic structures of the surrounding Arab countries. When Arafat went back to Gaza he brought with him the way to structure society and economy from Tunis and various other dictatorial Arab countries. The Palestinian economy was doing far better under the direct Israeli occupation. It is pretty common to hear the Palestinians point out that the introduction of the Palestinian Authority significantly undermined the economy compared to the situation that was in place before it. Additionally much economic damage was caused by Israeli responses to Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians and that includes the building of the wall and checkpoints. Prior to the breakout of the First Intifada there were no checkpoints and entry into Israel was entirely open. It is again pretty sloppy to claim that the security measures that the Palestinian disdain is the result of Israeli evil as opposed to being the direct result of the need to defend Israeli civilians that they obviously are when one looks at their emergence over time.
Lastly, the Israeli approach towards the Palestinians is the result of a lack of belief that the Palestinians are actually interested in living in peace with Israel as evidenced by their rejection of each and every peace proposal ever put forward by Israel. If the Palestinians are suffering, the people to blame are primarily themselves. In 2000 the Palestinians could have had their own country and they would indisputably been better off on every possible indicator right now. Instead then, and since, the Palestinians chose the path of rejection and violence. This does indeed seem irrational and unreasonable to most Israelis and nonetheless we have to deal with it the way it is not the way we would wish it to be.
Comment by Kora Z. on 28 September, 2015 at 3:15 pm
You know I used to believe that sort of Zionist propaganda. Especially about the peace process. But around the time of Oslo I – like most honest observers – realised there was something very, very, wrong with the line we'd been given (and that most of us were actively disseminating.) I'd assumed the settlers were just a handful of religious crazies, and that the actual Israeli political establishment, or the largest part of it, sincerely wanted a reasonable peace. So when Oslo was signed, I said to myself, "well, so now what are they going to do about the settlers? It's going to be hard to get some of those guys out. But I guess if they cut off funding to the settlements, and all those incentives to go live there, most of them will leave and then it'll be just the die-hards…" I expected them to start moving settlers out right away. Instead they did exactly the opposite. They started moving in more and more settlers, grabbing more land and more territory. This after just having committed to abandon the West Bank and turn it over to the Palestinian Authority. It was then I realised I'd been snookered. Sorry. If you are really intending to hand a territory over to its inhabitants, you don't use the occasion to a peace treaty promising to do so to move EVEN MORE settlers onto their territory. A lot of our eyes were opened at that point. We realised the Palestinians did accept the Israeli peace offer, and the Israelis showed they didn't have the slightest intention of actually making peace.
Comment by David Graeber on 4 October, 2015 at 5:16 pm
[…] https://internationaltimes.it/hostile-intelligence-reflections-from-a-visit-to-the-west-bank/ […]
Pingback by Jewish commentary and links: October 1, 2015 | Phil Ebersole's Blog on 1 October, 2015 at 9:51 am
Tnank you so much for making to understand much better the situation the Palestinian's people endure.
Comment by Brozovic on 5 October, 2015 at 9:10 am
Aa a young woman I, a Danish citizen, lived in Palestine on The West Bank right untill The 1967 war. Being part of a UN family I could freely move between what we then called The Jordanian site, including East Jerusalem with The Old City, and The Israeli Site. I Can fully confirm the way you have described the friendliness and hospitality of The Palestinian People to all us strangers. And certanly it is true, that the Young people were mostly quite free and westernly dressed, ,though it was more Commons to see The Palestinian woman in her embroidered traditional dresses and wearing a veil in the smaller villages.It is so heart breaking to witness the strangulation of this poor occupied people, The cruelty and terrorisme that they are Living under disgusts the majority of the rest of the World,something that will probably create a Big backlash on Israel one day, I'm sure.
Thank you for sharing your observations in Palestine.
Comment by Anne Gudbrand on 6 October, 2015 at 12:20 am
Yet another article by an ex-Zionist explaining how his eyes were opened. And analysing the psychologies of Jewish Israeli settlers and the indigenous West Bank Palestinians whose land they are incrementally stealing, as well as their economic well-being, privacy and dignity and sometimes life. Since the mid-1980s there have been tens of thousands of articles with identical content. They achieve nothing, especially when, like Graeber's, they make the towering mistake of claiming that the Israeli elite and the majority of voters behind it has no long-term plan.
This is dangerous rubbish. Draw a graph with time on one axis and degrees of land usurpation and freedom-deprivation on the other. Digest the fact that this majority-Israel speaks never of the West Bank, but rather of Judea and Samaria. Note the dozens of cases in which Israel shows the West the finger, i.e. shows it can get along very well, thank you, without the West; it has China, India, Africa as trading partners. The Israeli elite and the majority behind it 'wants it all': Eretz Israel. Method: ongoing, usually 'soft', ethnic cleansing. This plan is perfectly coherent and look: it works. In 1948 it worked and post-1967 it has worked, the Allon Plan being only the nicest version.
Graeber's detailed description of 'life under occupation' keeps the discourse firmly embedded in the the view that basically, Israel can't be touched, is OK, should remain a Jewish state but just clean up its act a bit. The two-state discourse whose principal function is to protect Zionism: Here at most 20% of Palestine ruled by the usurpers; there Israel, 20% of whose citizens are non-Jewish, as the unassailable safe haven. This genre and this discourse does not waste a single syllable on these people still residing as second-class citizens in the huge illegal settlement of "48", i.e. Israel proper. (Graeber might learn that the Palestinians distinguish between the '48 occupation and the 67 occupation; they are both 'occupations'.)
Worse, the majority of Palestinians – the refugees and their descendants – reside outside of historic Palestine and as far as this genre of article is concerned might as well not even exist.
So we have this troubling but non-huge problem of hoping the Israelis might be nice one day and give the Arabs a real Bantustine. As if this vision weren't as unrealistic as it is undesirable. This kind of article is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Move on.
Comment by Daniel R on 14 October, 2015 at 7:10 pm
what a load of shit I described life in '67 I made no political proposals of any kind, did not mention and in fact don't support a two-state solution.
Comment by David Graeber on 17 October, 2015 at 1:20 am
Thank you for a very detailed analysis of the current situation in Palestine. The article clears up a lot of misconception on life in Palestine.
Comment by Alwi on 25 January, 2016 at 11:07 am
Pingback by Articles – On This Land on 16 June, 2016 at 6:47 pm
Pingback by Synopsis | On This Land on 16 June, 2016 at 7:19 pm


text:
/*Se debe implementar una máquina de estados sencilla. Dados los siguientes estímulos:
enum Stimulus
{
	TurnOn,
	TurnOff,
	SpeedUp,
	SpeedDown
};

y los siguientes estados:
enum State
{
	Off,
	Stopped,
	Walking,
	Running,
	Error
};

Implementado la siguiente Lógica:

Estado inicial: Off

Off  TurnOn >Stopped  SpeedUp > Walking  SpeedUp > Running  SpeedUp >Error

   						< SpeedDown         <SpeedDown

De cualquier se pasa a Off con TurnOff
SpeedUp en Running lleva a Error
SpeedDown en Stopped también lleva a Error.
De Error sólo se sale con TurnOff. Cualquier otro estado lo conserva en Error
se debe implementar la función

void stimulate(struct FSM* fsm, enum Stimulus stimulus);

Que estimulará la máquina fsm con el estímulo stimulus avanzando al siguiente estado. Por cada
transición la máquina fsm debe imprimir por salida estándar:

[Estado anterior]  <estímulo> > [Estado nuevo]

Se debe implementar también un main que estimule la máquina. Junto a la implementación de
este ejercicio se pedirá un diagrama de estados con las transiciones de la máquina de estados.*/

#include <stdio.h>

enum Stimulus
{
	TurnOn,
	TurnOff,
	SpeedUp,
	SpeedDown
};

enum State
{
	Off,
	Stopped,
	Walking,
	Running,
	Error
};

char * STATE_STRINGS [5]= {"Off", "Stopped", "Walking","Running","Error"} ;
char * STIMULUS_STRINGS [4]= {"TurnOn", "TurnOff", "SpeedUp","SpeedDown"} ;

struct FSM
{
	enum State currentState;
	enum State oldState;
};

void stimulate(struct FSM*, enum Stimulus);

int main ()
{
	struct FSM fsm;
	fsm.currentState = Off;
	fsm.oldState = Off;

	// Correct processig of the FSM
	printf("------------- Correct processig -------------\n");
	stimulate(&fsm, TurnOn);
	stimulate(&fsm, SpeedUp);
	stimulate(&fsm, SpeedUp);
	stimulate(&fsm, SpeedDown);
	stimulate(&fsm, SpeedDown);
	stimulate(&fsm, TurnOff);

	printf("----------------- Bad processig ----------------\n");
	// Bad processig of the FSM
	stimulate(&fsm, TurnOn);
	stimulate(&fsm, SpeedDown);
	stimulate(&fsm, TurnOn);
	stimulate(&fsm, TurnOff);
}

void stimulate(struct FSM* fsm, enum Stimulus stimulus)
{
	if (fsm->currentState == Off && stimulus == TurnOn)
	{
		fsm->oldState = fsm->currentState;
		fsm->currentState = Stopped;
		printf("[%s]  <%s> > [%s]\n",STATE_STRINGS[fsm->oldState], STIMULUS_STRINGS[stimulus] ,STATE_STRINGS[fsm->currentState]);
	}
	else if (fsm->currentState == Stopped && stimulus == SpeedUp)
	{
		fsm->oldState = fsm->currentState;
		fsm->currentState = Walking;
		printf("[%s]  <%s> > [%s]\n",STATE_STRINGS[fsm->oldState], STIMULUS_STRINGS[stimulus] ,STATE_STRINGS[fsm->currentState]);
	}
	else if (fsm->currentState == Walking)
	{
		if(stimulus == SpeedUp)
		{
			fsm->oldState = fsm->currentState;
			fsm->currentState = Running;
			printf("[%s]  <%s> > [%s]\n",STATE_STRINGS[fsm->oldState], STIMULUS_STRINGS[stimulus] ,STATE_STRINGS[fsm->currentState]);
		}
		if (stimulus == SpeedDown)
		{
			fsm->oldState = fsm->currentState;
			fsm->currentState = Stopped;
			printf("[%s]  <%s> > [%s]\n",STATE_STRINGS[fsm->oldState], STIMULUS_STRINGS[stimulus] ,STATE_STRINGS[fsm->currentState]);
		}
	}
	else if (fsm->currentState == Running && stimulus == SpeedDown)
	{
		fsm->oldState = fsm->currentState;
		fsm->currentState = Walking;
		printf("[%s]  <%s> > [%s]\n",STATE_STRINGS[fsm->oldState], STIMULUS_STRINGS[stimulus] ,STATE_STRINGS[fsm->currentState]);
	}
	else if (stimulus == TurnOff)
	{
		fsm->oldState = fsm->currentState;
		fsm->currentState = Off;
		printf("[%s]  <%s> > [%s]\n",STATE_STRINGS[fsm->oldState], STIMULUS_STRINGS[stimulus] ,STATE_STRINGS[fsm->currentState]);
	}
	else
	{
		fsm->oldState = fsm->currentState;
		fsm->currentState = Error;
		printf("[%s]  <%s> > [%s]\n",STATE_STRINGS[fsm->oldState], STIMULUS_STRINGS[stimulus] ,STATE_STRINGS[fsm->currentState]);
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
The Women's Euro was significant. Here's why
In June, we talked about women's sports having a "movement" in 2022, something more powerful and sustainable than a "moment." The investment and interest in women's sports seems to be continuing as we head into the back half of the year, and we have more evidence to this "movement": The UEFA Women's Euro 2022. The tournament could advance women's soccer more than any event since the 1999 Women's World Cup. Just look at the staggering metrics:
■ The Final drew nearly 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium on July 31. It was the largest attendance ever for a Euro men's or women's match. Ever. The scenes were brilliant from Wembley.
■ The tournament drew 574,865 fans over the course of 31 matches played around England.
■ Average attendance of 18,544, while short of UEFA's pre-tournament aim of 20,000 per game, was still a great number considering the various venues, markets and matchups during the event.
■ The last time England hosted the tournament, in 2005, it averaged 7,894. In the Netherlands in 2017 it drew an average of 7,743. So, this year's event more than doubled 2017.
■ Going into the Final, more than 100,000 fans who attended were believed to be under 12 years old, while 47% of fans going into the Final were women. Great growth demos to build upon.
In looking at attendance trends, don't overlook that the three highest-attended matches in European soccer this year have all been women's matches — two involving FC Barcelona's women's team at Camp Nou that drew over 91,000 and the Euro Final at Wembley. Read those facts again and let them sink in.
Let's look at the media engagement. The Women's Final was watched by a record 17.4 million on the BBC, becoming the most-watched women's soccer game ever shown on U.K. TV. The Final was the most-watched TV program in the U.K. this year.
More evidence of the changing times: When England's women reached the Euro Final in 2009, viewership was 1.4 million. Twelve years later, that figure was up 1,143% to 17.4 million.
In Germany, viewership on public broadcaster ARD averaged 17.9 million — a record for women's soccer. That audience was nearly double the 9 million viewers that tuned in the last time the German women's team won the Euros in 2013.
And in the U.S., viewership was very strong. During that Sunday midday window, July 31, from 11:30 a.m.-2:40 p.m. ET, the match drew an audience of 885,000, with 327,000 in the 18-49 age range. That figure — in that time slot — is a very healthy number.
Yes, I'll grant you that these are just numbers. But they are powerful in their totality. It may have been the perfect storm of a strong England team, a surge in interest in women's soccer in the country and a summer event primed to draw fans eager to be together. You add it up and this is very good news for women's soccer leading into a Women's World Cup year in Australia and New Zealand.
That said, attendance and viewership is only a partial win for women's sports. There is still under-investment, unequal pay and lack of other support. Women on a national level have been winning in awareness and showing they can provide great entertainment on the field, but the rest of sports business marketplace — corporate sponsorship, ticket sales and merchandise sales — needs serious focus and attention.
Stop measuring women against men's sports — that's not a healthy value proposition. Let's see if the U.K.-based Women's Super League, which consists of Premier League women's clubs, can experience rub-off benefits. Let's see if the NWSL can take advantage of this momentum with hardcore marketing efforts to build up the excitement here, because we all know day-to-day league matches are far different than leveraging national fan interest during a global event.
When I consider the sports industry's attention to women's sports, I think of the many conversations with sources who always drop the famous Wayne Gretzky line: "I'm trying to skate where the puck is going to be, not where it's been." Isn't that women's sports? Because while there are many steep mountains to climb, I'll reiterate we're seeing a movement more than a moment.
Finally, it gives me great personal pleasure that SBJ is honoring John Swofford as one of our Champions of Sports Business. I wrote about my appreciation for Swofford's style and substance last August and a theme was that Swofford's story — featuring remarkable longevity and loyalty to North Carolina in this era of executive free agency — may never come along again in sports business. That was echoed by Burke Magnus, who told our Michael Smith in his great profile of Swofford (see story): "John could go down as the last of the old-school commissioners. He was the ultimate professional." Ultimate professional. Extraordinary person with integrity and honesty. A Champion of Sports Business.
Abraham Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
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The Pietras family rents a house where, for inexplicable reasons, the crews removed the shingles and did not complete the repair, which was not even requested. FactFinder 12 spoke to the owner of another roofing company who said this kind of situation is more common than people realize.
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The Solent LEP is launching a package of support measures to help businesses in the region plan for the impact of the UKs changing relationship with the EU.
Part of this package is a series of free to attend Brexit advisory clinics local businesses to meet with industry experts from across the Solent. The first of these free clinics is taking place on 25th February between 10am-12pm at Portsmouth International Port.
The topic is market diversification, and is entitled: 'Embracing the Opportunities and Facing the Challenges of Brexit'.


text:
Home India Arvind Kejriwal attacks Majithia, vows to create a 'New Punjab'
Arvind Kejriwal attacks Majithia, vows to create a 'New Punjab'
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who on Friday got bail in a defamation case filed by Bikram Singh Majithia, launched a fresh attack on the Punjab Revenue Minister over drug issue, daring the SAD leader to get him arrested and vowed to create a "new Punjab" after six months.
The AAP leader said he was not afraid of "false cases" and warned Majithia that "the people will take revenge from him in the coming elections".
"I challenge Majithia to arrest me in six months as they are in power. Else, I will arrest him after six months," the AAP national convenor said.
"The people of Punjab will take revenge for each and every case against them. In the coming elections, people will take revenge from Majithia," he said.
"After six months (I will) reconstruct a new Punjab," he said.
Kejriwal said that Punjab was in a bad state due to the drug problem and renewed his allegations against Majithia who is the brother-in-law of SAD chief and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal.
"Majithia said that I have defamed him. How dare he say this?" he asked.
"I ask you all, who is the drug dealer in Punjab? I want to ask him, how many mouths will you shut? When I travelled across Punjab, people told me that he files false cases to
threaten them," Kejriwal claimed.
"If he and the Badals can file defamation cases against me, I can understand what he can do to the 'Aam Aadmi'," he alleged.
"The court has summoned me, so I came here. I am the Chief Minister of Delhi. God has blessed me with many things but when a case is filed against a common man, his entire life
is ruined in going to courts. Today I want to say I'm not afraid of your false cases," he said.
Kejriwal and AAP leader Sanjay Singh were today granted bail by a local court here after they appeared in connection with the defamation case filed by Majithia.
The court has fixed October 15 as the next date for hearing.
Bikram Singh Majithia
Drug Issue
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Today see's Eurovision Young Musicians 2014 continue with the second seven pre-round performances in Cologne. Today the participants have 15 minutes to perform in front of an audience and the judges, the judges will score the performances which will go towards the scores on Saturday night and decide who wins Eurovision Young Musicians 2014.
You can watch the show live on the official website here.


I am a teacher. You may have heard that the National Union of Teachers (NUT) asked their members to vote about whether they want to strike about our pay or not.
The date of the strike has been set for 24th April 2008.
This sounds simple doesn't it? I found out that it isn't simple at all!
We held a meeting about whether the teachers in the school I work in should strike or not. Well, for a start, all the teachers do not belong to the same union so they cannot all strike.
If we strike we lose out on our wages for that day but it's in the name of increasing our wages so that we can afford to teach! The pay is too low and the demands are too high!
So as a school, everyone will not be striking because they do not all belong to the same union. This can come across as some teachers are striking and others are not but this may not be the case. It may be as simple as their union is not supporting this action.
Personal issues, such as, difficulties around arranging childcare can influence whether a teacher who is also a parent strikes or not.
Some heads will not undermine another union's action. Thus supply teachers may not be employed to teach the classes affected by the staff who are striking. The head can redistribute the children in other classes or send a letter saying that they should not come to school on that day.
If the school is a first and middle school combined; there are issues surrounding who else is striking. For example if many teachers in the middle school are striking but only one teacher in the first school belongs to the NUT. If they strike alone, all the children in first school will be in except the class who has a teacher in the NUT.
If the teacher is an Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) they may not feel as if they can partake in strikes at the present moment in time.
Ironically, the loss of a day's pay is an issue that prevents some teachers striking over this issue about our pay!
Others will strike regardless of how they voted in the ballot because if we are members of a union and we want them to support us when we are in (alleged) sticky situations, surely we should support them when they need it? Especially when a national ballot has taken place and the majority favour a strike?
Is it an expectation that you should strike if your union suggests it? You pay to be a member of the union so why should you if you don't agree with this action for whatever reason. The union will support its members unconditionally so this isn't an issue but is it fair to expect unconditional support and not give it back? If the NUT encouraged striking often the argument would be different. If it was over a small thing it would again be different! If they did not ask all its members to vote, it would be different! However, this is not the case.
Do you have an alternative view? If so please share it with me?
Teachers are given a rough time! We value footballers over the people who teach our kids?! I think it's crazy!
They get paid millions and do so little for the future. Children are the future!
I've always thought that those who work in health, education and care should be paid more!
Nurses are paid less than teachers, they have to work horrid shifts & they often don't have a social life because of it; yet they do such an important job! It's similar for those who are carers. They have to work funny shifts, lift those who are not mobile, do jobs that lets face it, most people wouldn't want to do; yet they don't get anything near what a medic, accountant, business consultant or account manager gets! And then you have teachers. We are semi social workers, carers for the kids and often the adults too, educators, counsellors and so much more. Yet we'll only get something similar to what business consultants or account managers would get if we became a head or deputy. With that, comes more responsibility and you're often, but not always, further away from the children.


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CHINA / SOCIETY
Xi voices 'full trust' for HK new chief, hopes city govt to unveil new changes
Electoral system proves successful, fits HK democracy
Chen Qingqing
Chen Qingqing co-leads the Global Times China desk. She covers diplomacy, Hong Kong affairs and Chinese tech firms.
Xu Keyue
Global Times reporter following Australia and Japan issues, also with a focus on social issues and overseas studies.
Published: May 30, 2022 11:10 PM
President Xi Jinping meets with John Lee, the newly appointed sixth-term chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, on Monday in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua
Chinese President Xi Jinping met John Lee Ka-chiu, the newly appointed sixth-term chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Monday in Beijing, during which he praised Lee for his patriotism and contributions for safeguarding national security and Hong Kong' s stability and assured that Lee has the full trust from the central government. The Chinese top leader also stresses the central government's resolve of unswervingly implementing the "one country, two systems" and that the city's new electoral system must be treasured and upheld, hoping that the new HKSAR government can unveil a new chapter for the city's development.
Experts in both the mainland and Hong Kong consider the central government's affirmation of Lee as a major requirement for Hong Kong officials - patriots with the firm stance who take action in advancing reforms to fix deeply-rooted problems that Hong Kong society has been facing over the past decades and in bringing the city into a new future.
As 2022 also marks the 25th anniversary of the city's return to the motherland, the message delivered by the central government is clear. The "one country, two systems" principle won't change as Xi fully recognized its practice over the past 25 years, and he also indicated a new direction for the future as the city is changing from chaos to being well governed and prosperous, experts noted.
In his meeting with Lee after he was officially appointed as the new chief executive (CE) and received an official appointment certificate of the State Council from Premier Li Keqiang on Monday morning, Xi praised Lee for maintaining the unwavering stance of loving the country and the HKSAR, being willing to assume responsibilities and actively performing his duties, as well as his contributions to safeguarding national security and Hong Kong's prosperity and stability in various roles.
"The central government gives full affirmation to you and has full trust in you," Xi said.
Over the past year, Hong Kong has successfully held the Election Committee election, the seventh-term Legislative Council election and the sixth-term CE election, which proved that the new electoral system has played a decisive role in implementing the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong," ensuring the position of Hong Kong people as their own masters, and facilitating a good environment in which all sectors of society work together for Hong Kong's development, Xi said.
He also noted that the new electoral system is a political and democratic system that is in line with the "one country, two systems" principle and suited to Hong Kong's realities and needs for development. It must be cherished and upheld for a long time.
For the central government, the new electoral system is very important for safeguarding national security, helping fully implement the "one country, two systems" in a correct manner, so it has to be upheld for a long time. "For those who seek to restart the political reform, they must feel disappointed," Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, told the Global Times on Monday.
"I believe even if Hong Kong's electoral system will see further improvement in the future, those changes will only be made in making the patriots more united and stronger rather than copying the Western-style democratic system," Lau said.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, and despite challenges over the past 25 years, the practice of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong has been a resounding success, Xi said, noting that the central government's resolve to fully and faithfully implement the principle of "one country, two systems" has never wavered, still less will it change.
Xi said he believes that the new HKSAR government will bring new changes and Hong Kong will make new advances in its development.
In evaluating the political performance of Lee, his firm stance of being a patriot comes as the first quality, and in implementing the new electoral reform, electing those who are truly patriots is the top objective of the system, Tian Feilong, a legal expert at Beihang University in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.
"Lee's political quality and governing performance is highly affirmed by the central government, and the new electoral system laid the foundation for Hong Kong's democracy," Tian said.
Lee was elected with 99.16 percent of the supportive votes on May 8, which was the first election for CE since the implementation of the national security law for Hong Kong and the electoral reforms that brought about the principle of only patriots administering Hong Kong. The election also completed the final step of the electoral system reform, after electing EC members, LegCo members and now CE, which is a fresh starting point for Hong Kong in terms of local governance by eliminating interference from anti-China and rioting forces in the system, expert said.
In the eyes of the top leader, the new HKSAR government is facing the most favorable environment in terms of governing than the previous CEs, as both the national security law for Hong Kong and the new electoral system ensure that the anti-China rioting forces and external forces won't be able to hinder local governance, Lau noted.
"This brings up the new expectation from the central government for the local governance, as the new government is expected to make progress in fixing the problems that Hong Kong faces, and the central government will closely supervise it and hold it accountable," he said.
Besides forming a capable team for the new government, fixing the region's housing woes and implementing Article 23 of the Basic Law were among the urgent tasks listed by Lee, who also highlighted youth education, the city's further integration into the country's overall development plan in his policy address.
"The top leader's message is clear. The new government, along with different sectors of Hong Kong society, needs to work together and make some changes in carrying out the reforms," Tam Yiu-chung, a member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee from Hong Kong, told the Global Times.
Lee will assume office on July 1, 2022.
State Council appoints John Lee as Hong Kong chief executive
The State Council, China's cabinet, decided Friday to appoint John Lee Ka-chiu as the sixth-term chief executive of ...
Xi praises new HK chief John Lee for his patriotism, conveys central govt's trust in meeting in Beijing
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with John Lee Ka-chiu on Monday afternoon and congratulated him on his election ...
HK police to perform Chinese-style foot drills starting July 1, a removal of British 'colonial overtones'
From July 1, 2022, the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) will officially abandon British-style foot drills and perform ...


Thank you for making beautiful sense of this world, Katy. Your haiku and painting are so very lovely.
Such a beautiful, feel-good painting — a shock to read the distressingly sad words under it.
you are always very sensitive and moving. I'm speechless. in life, love and tolerance, solidarity, and consciousness will always win. Thank you, Katy, my dear friend. Felicidades!!!!
My pleasure, Fernando. You opened my heart/world a bit. Sending You so much Love and wishes for a saturation of Peace in every pocket of Your world….gosh….in every EVERYTHING of All of Our Worlds!!! Right?! Muito Obrigado e Felicidades!!!


There has been so much hype ever since the opening of Jamie's Italian, I have wanted to check it out but I don't like queuing up to eat at a restaurant. So I decided the best option was for a late lunch (about 2:30) on a Saturday, thinking the wait for a table might not be as long as mamaks. To my surprise, there was no line and we were seated straight away.
The menu is divided in to sections; breads & nibbles, antipasti, pasta, mains, sides and deserts, with lots of tasty sounding things in each section. Everything is very reasonably priced, which is not something you can say about many restaurants in Sydney.
I enjoyed my meal here good food , reasonably priced and the service was friendly and efficient. If I were in the area looking for something to eat and saw there was no line if would defiantly eat at Jamie's Italian again.
Crispy Squid $12.00 – Fired bite sized pieces of crispy squid , the dip is a strong garlic mayo .
Pumpkin Ravioli Speciall $14 – My favourite! The sweet pumpkin inside the ravioli combined with the buttery sauce make for a very tasty dish.
Bucatini Carbonara $12 -Just OK I found it a bit bland lacking the creamy taste that I normally associate with a carbonara.
Tiramisu $9– On to the deserts and there all $9 so no reason not to have one or two. I'm a big fan of tiramisu and this one did not disappoint. It's very moist almost watery with a strong coffee taste. The orange mascarpone adds a lot of flavour and together with the chocolate makes for a very nice desert.
The tiramisu looks amazing. I've read alot of mixed things about Jamie's Italian.
If there was no line, I'd give it a go too. The pumpkin raviolli sounds like a real winner too!
The tiramisu and the ravioli were my favs. Its worth a try if there is no line , its good but not something I would line up for.
Love carbonara so it's a shame it's not as creamy as expected. The spag bol I had was average but brightened by the crunchy breadcrumbs.
I love carbonara too, but this one was a total let down….
I'm adding the Pumpkin Ravioli Speciall to my list of dishes to try when I get to visit Jamie's!
Really like the look of the pumpkin ravioli!


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Your club should buy Valon Behrami from Napoli, and here's why
Need a midfielder? Great! Napoli have one for you! Step right on down and see what you can get...
By Conor Dowley@c_dowley Jul 30, 2014, 4:40am CEST
Share All sharing options for: Your club should buy Valon Behrami from Napoli, and here's why
Enrico Locci
Lots of teams in Europe need to buy a midfielder or two this summer. That's no secret; teams always need midfielders. It's part of the game, and it's probably the most ever-changing position group in the game. In fact, odds are that the club you support is in need of a midfielder.
Fortunately for you and your team in need, Napoli have themselves a midfielder who's available for purchase! Valon Behrami can be part of your team and their hopeful successes this upcoming season! For the low, low price of €8 million, he can be yours! Come on down and check this guy out...
Central Midfield
DOB: April 19, 1985 (29) | Height: 6'0" (1.85 meters)
2014 Season: 33 appearances (24 starts)
0 goals, 0 assists
Valon Behrami
Why You Want Him: Behrami is a good "engine room" type of midfielder, a role slowly coming back more in to prominence in football. He has a high motor that he uses to work his way back and forth across the pitch in a hurry to support the squad both in attack and defense. He fits in seamlessly in most two- or three-man midfield setups, and can serve as the kind of player that helps a side do what it does.
Behrami is better in defense than directly attacking, as he lacks a good long range shot and doesn't have the best through balls around. He does tackle well, though, and generally keeps himself well positioned to cut off runs and intercept passes. He's also a pretty stout guy physically, letting him bang around with more physical attackers and giving him value in the box on set pieces.
He's also a pretty well experienced guy, with a solid playing history in Italy as well as a history of playing well in the English Premier League, generally considered one of the tougher places to play with the speed and physicality of the league. Behrami's also done well in European competition, and would serve as an excellent veteran presence to a younger team or one in need of a boost after a down season,
Why He's Available: Behrami just never really seem to fit in to the style and setup that Rafa Benitez put in to place when he took over at Napoli. He never seemed comfortable serving as a linking element in midfield buildup play, never looked like he quite "got" the way he was asked to defend within the unit, and perhaps just never really fit in with Rafa himself.
Behrami also had a big fallout with his former midfield partner Gokhan Inler. The two were once fast friends and showed an almost telepathic connection in midfield two years ago, but last year an agent-driven dispute angered Behrami and fractured that relationship. He just never seemed to function right with Inler next to him in midfield, and quickly lost his place in the side once Jorginho arrived in January and quickly established himself as a key cog in the side.
Behrami's not suddenly an awful player, but he did seem to take a bit of a step back last season and needs to find a place to call home that fits him better than Napoli does now. Find the right team, and he can give you quality performances again.


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Africa, Aid, Climate Change, Combating Desertification and Drought, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Editors' Choice, Environment, Featured, Food and Agriculture, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, Humanitarian Emergencies, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Natural Resources, Population, Poverty & SDGs, TerraViva United Nations, Water & Sanitation, Women & Economy
Malawi's Drought Leaves Millions High and Dry
By Charity Chimungu Phiri	Reprint | | Print | |En español
Felistas Ngoma, 72, from Nkhamenya in the Kasungu District of Malawi, prepares nsima in her kitchen. Credit: Charity Chimungu Phiri/IPS
BLANTYRE, May 27 2016 (IPS) - It's Saturday, market day at the popular Bvumbwe market in Thyolo district. About 40 kilometers away in Chiradzulu district, a vegetable vendor and mother of five, Esnart Nthawa, 35, has woken up at three a.m. to prepare for the journey to the market.
The day before, she went about her village buying tomatoes and okra from farmers, which she has safely packed in her dengu (woven basket).
Now she's just waiting for a hired bicycle to take her and her merchandise to the bus station, where she will catch a minibus to Bvumbwe market. This way, her goods reach the market quicker and safer. Afterwards, she and her colleagues will pack their baskets and walk back home.
"We walk for at least three hours…our bodies have just gotten used to it because we have no choice. If I don't do this, then my children will suffer. As I am talking to you now, they are waiting for me to bring them food," Nthawa told IPS.
"I will buy a basin of maize there at the maize mill and have it processed into flour for nsima [a thick porridge that is Malawi's staple food]. That's the only meal they will eat today," she said.
El Nino-Induced Drought in Zimbabwe
'Little Boy' Devouring African Food
Nthawa added: "Last harvest we only realised two bags of maize as you know the weather was bad. That maize has now run out, we are living day by day…eating what we can manage to source for that day."
Nthawa's story resonates with many Malawians today. Almost half of the country's population is facing hunger this year due to no or low harvests, resulting from the effects of El Nino which hit most parts of the southern and northern regions late last year.
Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development George Chaponda said in Parliament on May 25 that 8.4 million Malawians will be food insecure during the 2016/2017 season.
His statement clearly contradicts President Peter Mutharika, who on Friday said in his State of the Nation Address that 2.8 million people faced hunger.
The new high figure follows a World Food Programme Rapid assessment which said over eight million Malawians will be food insecure this year due to the effects of El Nino. Destructive floods in the north have compounded the country's woes, causing the president to declare a state of emergency in April.
With the drought also affecting Zimbabwe and other countries in southern Africa, an estimated 28 million people are now going hungry.
In order to deal with the crisis, Agriculture Minister Chaponda says the government has "laid out a plan to import about one million metric tons of white maize to fill the food gap". The authorities project that at least 1,290,000 metric tons of maize are needed to deal with the food crisis, out of which 790,000 metric tons will be distributed to those heavily affected by the drought starting from April 2016 to March 2017.
The government also plans to intensify irrigation on commercial and smallholder farms, with an aim of increasing maize production at the national level. Officials say 18 million dollars is needed to carry out these measures.
"There's too much politicisation and overreliance on maize as a crop for consumption." -- Chairperson of the Right to Food Network Billy Mayaya
In the meantime, food prices continue to rise daily as the national currency, the Kwacha, continues to depreciate, forcing poor farming families to reduce their number of meals per day or sell their property in order to cope with the situation. A bag of maize which normally sells for seven dollars now costs 15 dollars.
As usual, children have been hardest hit by the situation. The latest statistics on Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) show a 100 percent increase from December 2015 to January 2016, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
UNICEF says it recorded more than 4,300 cases of severe malnutrition in the month of January alone this year, double the number recorded in December 2015.
Dr. Queen Dube, a pediatrician at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre – the main government referral hospital in southern Malawi – affirmed to IPS that there has been an increase in the number of malnutrition cases at the hospital.
"At the moment, we have about 15 children admitted at our Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit…they have Marasmus, where they're very thin or wasted, while others have Kwashiorkor, where the body is swollen. In other cases, the children have a combination of the two. These children suffer greatly from diarrheal diseases," said Dube.
She added that the hospital offers these children therapeutic feeding of special types of milk and chiponde (fortified peanut butter) for a determined period of time, until they pick up in weight and improve in general body appearance.
"They are also given treatment for any underlying illness which they might have. Additionally, we also provide counseling to the mothers and guardians on proper nutrition so that when they get back home they can utilize the very little foods they have to prepare nutritious meals for their children," she explained.
Rights activists say it is high time the authorities started taking on board recommendations on how to make Malawi food secure made by independent groups such as the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee-MVAC, which said 2.8 million people faced hunger in 2015.
Chairperson of the Right to Food Network Billy Mayaya told IPS: "There's too much politicisation and overreliance on maize as a crop for consumption. The government needs to use the data from MVAC as well as consider the Green Belt Initiative (GBI) and modalities to bring it to fruition.
Calling for greater diversity in the traditional diet, he said, "These plans can be effected as long as there's a sustained political will."
In his state of the nation address on May 20, President Mutharika said the Green Belt Initiative was still his government's priority "in order to increase productivity of selected high value crops.
"I am therefore pleased to report that construction of the irrigation infrastructure and the sugarcane factory in Salima district has been completed…the government has an ongoing Land Management Contract with Malawi Mangoes Limited where land has been provided for the production of bananas and mangoes," he said.
In addition, the president said the government plans to increase rice production for both consumption and export, as well as make the tobacco industry vibrant again. Malawi mainly relies on tobacco for its foreign exchange earnings.
In February, President Mutharika made an international appeal for assistance, following which development partners including Britain and Japan provided over 35 million dollars. The government also obtained 80 million dollars from the World Bank for the Emergency Floods Recovery Project.
The U.S. government has been the first to respond to the latest crisis, providing the Malawian government with 55 million dollars.
Meanwhile, the struggle for survival continues for poor Malawian families such as Esnart Nthawa's. Her children are still eating one meal a day, as those in power continue to meet to strategize on the crisis over fancy dinners in expensive hotels.
Child Malnutrition