Film review: 5 broken cameras

Hot Docs Trailers 2012: 5 BROKEN CAMERAS

 

4 March 2013. A World to Win News Service. 5 Broken Cameras, the first Palestinian documentary nominated for an Oscar, gives an overwhelming depiction of the injustice and brutality on a massive scale against the residents of a village called Bilin in the West Bank. Israeli settlers exude entitlement as they move into new apartments on the hilltops surrounding Bilin, settlements on land stolen from Belin farmers. Not only are Belin’s inhabitants viciously assaulted and oppressed but even the olive trees that are supposedly left to them are burned by brazen settlers or uprooted by the army using armoured construction machinery.

Starting in 2005 and filming over a period of five years with a succession of five cameras destroyed one after another by Israeli soldiers or settlers, Emad Burnat, a farmer turned amateur filmmaker, documented the protests against the land seizures by the Israeli government and the wall under construction that occupies and will separate them from their farmland. Despite great personal risk, he continued filming from a sense of moral obligation to his people and the desire to make the world aware of the struggle to save their land. In 2009 Burnat enlisted the aid of Israeli activist and filmmaker Guy Davidi to help make the film.

The film won many prizes worldwide, in Europe and in the U.S. at the Sundance Film Festival. That this documentary did not win an Oscar is not surprising in a climate where the reactionary feature film Argo received the award for the best picture of the year. Despite having an official invitation to attend the Academy Awards ceremony, when Emad Burnat, his wife and youngest son Gibreel landed in Los Angeles, they were detained and almost deported by U.S. immigration officials until filmmaker Michael Moore intervened and called in Academy lawyers.

What is Israel Really Up to Gaza?

Smoke and fire from an Israeli bomb rises into the air above Gaza City

from Counterpunch by JOHN MEARSHEIMER

In response to a recent upsurge in tit for tat strikes between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel decided to ratchet up the violence even further by assassinating Hamas’s military chief, Ahmad Jabari. Hamas, which had been playing a minor role in these exchanges and even appears to have been interested in working out a long-term ceasefire, predictably responded by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel, a few even landing near Tel Aviv. Not surprisingly, the Israelis have threatened a wider conflict, to include a possible invasion of Gaza to topple Hamas and eliminate the rocket threat.

There is some chance that Operation ‘Pillar of Defence’, as the Israelis are calling their current campaign, might become a full-scale war. But even if it does, it will not put an end to Israel’s troubles in Gaza. After all, Israel launched a devastating war against Hamas in the winter of 2008-9 – Operation Cast Lead – and Hamas is still in power and still firing rockets at Israel. In the summer of 2006 Israel went to war against Hizbullah in order to eliminate its missiles and weaken its political position in Lebanon. That offensive failed as well: Hizbullah has far more missiles today than it had in 2006 and its influence in Lebanon is arguably greater than it was in 2006. Pillar of Defence is likely to share a similar fate.

Israel can use force against Hamas in three distinct ways. First, it can try to cripple the organisation by assassinating its leaders, as it did when it killed Jabari two days ago. Decapitation will not work, however, because there is no shortage of subordinates to replace the dead leaders, and sometimes the new ones are more capable and dangerous than their predecessors. The Israelis found this out in Lebanon in 1992 when they assassinated Hizbullah’s leader, Abbas Musawi, only to find that his replacement, Hassan Nasrallah, was an even more formidable adversary.

Book Exposes Violent Role of Paramilitaries in Haiti

Paramilitaries destroyed the free school buses that had been operating in Cap Haitian under Aristide’s government. Credit: Judith Scherr, Cap Haitian, Haiti, August 2004.

By Judith Scherr, Inter Press Service

OAKLAND, California, Aug 16 2012 (IPS) – Haiti’s brutal army was disbanded in 1995, yet armed and uniformed paramilitaries, with no government affiliation, occupy former army bases today.

President Michel Martelly, who has promised to restore the army, has not called on police or U.N. troops to dislodge these ad-hoc soldiers.

Given the army’s history of violent opposition to democracy, Martelly’s plan to renew the army “can only lead to more suffering”, says Jeb Sprague in his forthcoming book “Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti”, to be released mid August by Monthly Review Press.

The role of Haiti’s military and paramilitary forces has received too little academic and media attention, says Sprague, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He hopes his book will help to fill that gap.

.
Sprague researched the book over more than six years, traveling numerous times to Haiti, procuring some 11,000 U.S. State Department documents through the Freedom of Information Act, interviewing more than 50 people, reading the Wikileaks’ files on Haiti, and studying secondary sources.

Palestine: Btselem’s end of 2011 video

btselem on Jan 4, 2012

In 2011, volunteers in B’Tselem’s camera project filmed over 500 hours of footage in the West Bank.

There are two minutes we collected from it, in order to sum up the passing year.

UN to reduce its occupation force in Haiti

MINUSTAH has more than 8,700 soldiers and 3,500 police in the French-speaking Caribbean country. Its mandate expires October 15.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Monday September 19, 2011 – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced plans to discuss with the Haitian government, the gradual reduction of MINUSTAH’s peacekeeping force in the country.

This follows violent protests about a sexual assault on an 18 year old resident, allegedly by five Uruguayan peacekeepers who left the country on Friday.

In a broadcast, Ban apologized for the incident, which he termed “totally unacceptable.”

While he praised MINUSTAH’s contribution to the country since 2004, he said he also understands the frustrations of the Haitian people.

Stone pelters on bikes attack Kashmir police station

 August 28, 2011

SRINAGAR: Over 300 motorcycle-borne stone pelters attacked a police station in this Jammu and Kashmir summer capital, injuring six policemen. Over 70 attackers were arrested and 10 bikes were seized during the clashes, which lasted for five hours, police said Sunday.

As Muslims throughout the Kashmir Valley prayed in mosques to observe ‘Shab-e-Qadr’ — the holiest night according to the Muslim calendar — the stone pelters attacked a police station Saturday night, trying to re-enact the unrest witnessed here last year.

As security forces were busy facilitating the smooth conduct of prayers at various mosques in the city, the men attacked the old city’s Nowhatta police station, a police statement said here.

Kashmir police arrested in deadly misconduct cases

(AFP) – 8/7/11

SRINAGAR, India — Three policemen and an army officer have been arrested in Indian Kashmir as part of separate investigations into the death of a man in custody and an allegedly faked gunbattle, officials said Monday.

Last month, Nazim Rashid, a 28-year-old shopkeeper, died after being detained by counter-insurgency police in the northern town of Sopore in connection with an unsolved murder.

The cause of his death was not disclosed, but it resulted in a one-day strike across the Himalayan state and promises from chief minister Omar Abdullah of “swift and exemplary action”.

“Two policemen have been arrested and a few others are under the scanner,” a police officer told AFP on Monday on condition of anonymity, adding that the arrests were made at the weekend.

The EU and NATO’s Role in the US War on Afghanistan

Soldiers from the Nato-led force, Isaf, hold flags during a change of command ceremony at their headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan

How Afghanistan Became a War for NATO

January 9, 2011

By Gareth Porter

The official line of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO command in Afghanistan, is that the war against Afghan insurgents is vital to the security of all the countries providing troops there.

In fact, however, NATO was given a central role in Afghanistan because of the influence of U.S. officials concerned with the alliance, according to a U.S. military officer who was in a position to observe the decision-making process.

“NATO’s role in Afghanistan is more about NATO than it is about Afghanistan,” the officer, who insisted on anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the subject, told IPS in an interview.

The alliance would never have been given such a prominent role in Afghanistan but for the fact that the George W. Bush administration wanted no significant U.S. military role there that could interfere with their plans to take control of Iraq.

That reality gave U.S. officials working on NATO an opening.

Gen. James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) from 2003 to 2005, pushed aggressively for giving NATO the primary security role in Afghanistan, according to the officer.

“Jones sold [Defence Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld on turning Afghanistan over to NATO,” said the officer, adding that he did so with the full support of Pentagon officials with responsibilities for NATO. “You have to understand that the NATO lobbyists are very prominent in the Pentagon ” both in the Office of the Secretary of Defence and on the Joint Staff,” said the officer.

 

Jones admitted in an October 2005 interview with American Forces Press Service that NATO had struggled to avoid becoming irrelevant after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. “NATO was in limbo for a bit,” he said.

 

But the 9/11 attacks had offered a new opportunity for NATO to demonstrate its relevance.

India employing Israeli “pacification” tactics in Kashmir

A Kashmiri protestor raises his fist to Indian forces during a protest in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, 13 August 2010. (Newscom)

Jimmy Johnson, The Electronic Intifada, 19 August 2010

The 2010 summer in the disputed area of Jammu and Kashmir, administered by India, has been marked by popular protests by Kashmiris and crackdowns by India’s military. The stream of violence has left more than fifty dead, mostly young protestors. The situation in Kashmir has some parallels with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even borrowing the term intifada to describe the uprising. But the connection is more than analogy — Israel’s pacification efforts against Palestinians have proven valuable for the Indian police, army and intelligence services in their campaigns to pacify Jammu and Kashmir with numerous Indian military and security imports from Israel leading the way.

In Kashmir, stone throwers face off with Indian security forces

Caught in tensions between India and Pakistan, Kashmir's youth have turned to an old-fashioned method of dissent: stone throwing. Clashes with troops have become increasingly commonplace, and there is now a group on Facebook called "Kashmir Stone Throwers Association.”

By Emily Wax

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, July 17, 2010

SRINAGAR, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR — One minute, a shaggy-haired 21-year-old is on the Internet, mixing brooding rock music with video footage of young Kashmiris protesting Indian control of this disputed Himalayan region. The next, he’s out on the streets wielding a more traditional weapon: the stone.

The latest outbreak of dissent here, dubbed “Kashmir’s stone war,” marks a shift in the mostly Muslim region’s long-running struggle for autonomy. In a post-9/11, globalized world, Pakistan-backed separatists no longer roam the streets of this summer capital with guns. Instead, the heirs to the conflict are styling their discontent after cellphone images of the Palestinian uprising and its stone-throwing youths.

“If we take up arms, the world will call us terrorists. Stone pelting is the only way to fight for our freedom,” said Sajid Shah, a.k.a. Lion of Allah, who was editing his videos in hiding Wednesday. “It makes India think. It makes the world think: What’s happening in Kashmir? We will get our freedom with the stone.”

Police fire on Kashmir protesters

 

”] At least one person has been killed and tens of others injured after clashes between Indian security forces and hundreds of demonstrators in Indian-administered Kashmir. Paramilitary police fired on the demonstrators who tried to torch a paramilitary bunker on Sunday, police said. More were injured in subsequent clashes. Hundreds of people took to the streets of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state, in an angry protest against the death of a 25-year-old who protesters alleged had died after being beaten by soldiers in a demonstration on June 12. The protesters threw rocks at security forces and surrounded an armoured vehicle belonging to paramilitary soldiers. Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force, said: “We exercised maximum restraint. Our soldiers opened fire only in self-defence after the protesters tried to torch the bunker.” Bad timing Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri reporting from Srinigar, said: “The violence couldn’t have come at a more worse time for the people of Kashmir. It’s peak tourist season and families live entirely on tourism. They say if violence spreads, the only ones to suffer will be them.” The demonstration swelled after the shots were fired, when hundreds more people poured into the streets, chanting “We want freedom” and “Indian forces leave Kashmir”. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Muslim-majority Kashmir. Opposition groups have been fighting since 1989 for the Himalayan region’s independence from India or its merger with neighbouring Pakistan.

Afghanistan Occupation: Withdrawal Cancelled, Details at 11

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

A bleak Ghazni Province seems to offer little, but a Pentagon study says it may have among the world’s largest deposits of lithium.

New York Times

June 13, 2010

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

I don’t write poems but, in any case, poems are not poems

Ghassan Hage

Long ago, I was made to understand that Palestine was not Palestine ;
I was also informed that Palestinians were not Palestinians;
They also explained to me that ethnic cleansing was not ethnic cleansing.
And when naive old me saw freedom fighters
they patiently showed me that they were not freedom fighters,
and that resistance was not resistance.
And when, stupidly, I noticed arrogance, oppression and humiliation
they benevolently enlightened me so I can see that arrogance was not arrogance,
oppression was not oppression, and humiliation was not humiliation.
I saw misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.
But they told me that they were experts
in misery, racism, inhumanity and concentrations camps
and I have to take their word for it:
this was not misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentrations camp.
Over the years they’ve taught me so many things:
invasion was not invasion, occupation was not occupation,
colonialism was not colonialism and apartheid was not apartheid…
They opened my simple mind to even more complex truths
that my poor brain could not on its own compute like:
‘having nuclear weapons’ was not ‘having nuclear weapons’,
‘not having weapons of mass destruction’ was ‘having weapons of mass destruction’.
And, democracy (in the Gaza strip) was not democracy.
Having second class citizens (in Israel ) was democracy.
So you’ll excuse me if I am not surprised to learn today
that there were more things that I thought were evident that are not:
peace activists are not peace activists, piracy is not piracy,
the massacre of unarmed people is not the massacre of unarmed people.
I have such a limited brain and my ignorance is unlimited.
And they’re so fucking intelligent. Really.