Selves and Others

On March 12, 2006, the seventy-sixth anniversary of the Salt March, as the world suffers the consequences of a US-led war of aggression against Iraq, Latino conscientious objectors and parents of fallen soldiers begin their own two-week march of nonviolent protest.

On a BBC interview of the great boxer George Foreman I heard several years ago about his fight with Muhammad Ali that took place in 1974 in what was then known as Zaire the crowds adored Ali and despised Foreman. But Foreman told the interviewer that was precisely the way he liked it. In the telling of his life’s story Foreman recounted that he had been a terrible person. He was so bad, so evil, that the booing and jeers of the a crowd were music to his ears. He said "when you’re that evil, you want people to hate you, the more they hate you, the greater you feel, the tougher, the stronger. If people had liked me it would have made me feel weak, the more they hated me, the more powerful I felt." Later in the interview he said that losing to Ali was the best thing that ever happened to him. It ultimately changed his life for the better and the evil left his heart. Had he won that fight he said, he would have been lost forever in a place so horrible he could not contemplate it. (...)

in Jerusalem

Israeli ministers were secretly warned just after the Six-Day War in 1967 that any policy of building settlements across occupied Palestinian territories violated international law.

A "top secret" memo by the Foreign Ministry’s then legal counsel said that would "contravene the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention". Growth of Jewish settlements over the next three decades followed. (...)

It was the wrong sort of courage and she was defending the freedom of the wrong people

You’ve got to fight. It’s the only conclusion I can draw as I see the renewed erosion of our freedom to discuss the Middle East. The most recent example - and the most shameful - is the cowardly decision of the New York Theatre Workshop to cancel the Royal Court’s splendid production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

It’s the story - in her own words and emails - of the brave young American woman who travelled to Gaza to protect innocent Palestinians and who stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer in an attempt to prevent the driver from destroying a Palestinian home. The bulldozer drove over her and then reversed and crushed her a second time. "My back is broken," she said before she died. (...)

BELGRADE, Mar 11 (IPS) - The sudden death of former leader Slobodan Milosevic (64) Saturday has brought the focus back on the controversies of his rule, and raised questions again about the future of Serbia.

"History is yet to have its say on the decade of Milosevic’s rule in Serbia, as it was marked by tough controversy," historian Predrag Markovic told IPS. "However, this untimely death means that the chance of coming to terms with the wars of the ’90s is missed now, and that is a pity."

Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his bed in the detention unit of the United Nations founded International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Saturday morning. An ICTY statement said a medical officer was called in and pronounced Milosevic dead.

The statement added that the Dutch police and Dutch coroner were called in to start an inquiry. A full autopsy and toxicological examination have been ordered, the short statement said.

Informed sources told IPS that suicide was being ruled out and that Milosevic appears to have died in his sleep during the night. He was evidently dead for several hours before a guard found out. (...)

The Madrid massacre of 11 March 2004 was the prelude to the political defeat of Spain’s political right. Two years on, says Mariano Aguirre, it is deploying a conspiracy theory about 11-M as part of its comeback.

Two years after the 11 March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured around 1,900, Spain lives in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, most citizens have absorbed in a peaceful, non-vengeful way the overwhelming evidence that a transnational, radical Islamist network had targeted Madrid on that terrible day. On the other hand, a group of politicians, journalists and demagogues have attempted to poison the public mind by spreading paranoid conspiracy theories. As a result, the social coherence that the terrorists were not able to destroy is now under siege by some political actors who have not accepted the decision of the Spanish people to vote José Maria Aznar’s rightwing government out of office three days after the attacks. (...)

[March 10, 2006]