Peace hopes blown over with Arafat’s death

Israel continues to perpetuate its crime on the name of security, and the international governments continue to keep their hands behind their backs. The Jewish state uses the presence of Hamas in the region as an excuse to commit anti human actions; starving and killing thousands Gazans including children, elderly and women. After the Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2005, Israel imposed a blockade on the region allowing only a few basic humanitarian suppliers into the ship, ‘Israel Allow fresh food but not canned food, frozen meat but not fresh one etc’. According to the World Health Organization, one third of children under five and pregnant women are anemic. In addition to that, the food distribution has been suspended several times since June 2007 as a result of border closures letting the most fragile dying from hunger. Stopping food from reaching the region to wipe out the Gaza’s population was not enough.   Israel wants to make the life of Palestinians in Gaza unbearable, depriving then from all their rights. Indeed Building materials such as cement, concrete and wood were nearly always refused entry, which strongly weakened the region’s expansion and affected its economy, which reached bottom in 2008, with 40% employment. Nineteen months after the blockade of the strip, Israel launched an offensive attack on Hamas. Israel said that the attack was made to destroy or reduce Hamas as a fighting force and to capture its stocks of weapons but ended up by killing more than 1,000 civilians including children, ‘as bombing were taking place at school time’ according to medical sources. Gaza also suffered extensive damage of housing and business’ UN FAO estimates a $180m of damage to the agricultural sector’. Twenty two days after the attack, Israel declared ceasefire claiming its victory against Hamas but the Islamic Resistance Movement did not agree on that, saying that Israel has already violated the ceasefire several times.

Obama the vain joy for the Muslim and Arab world

Mr. Obama visited Cairo soon after his election delivering a speech and reaching out to Muslims around the world. The US president began demanding that Israel stops its settlement activity in the occupied West Bank including in East Jerusalem, giving million of Arabs hope for justice and freedom. But that did not last long. Indeed, a year later, Mr. Obama appeared to accept only partial restrictions on the settlement growth, which angered the Palestinians who were in total disillusion and despair.

Israel has powerful people behind

Neither Obama alone, nor a ‘Watchman’ is able to urge Israel for peace.

The Jewish state seems to have strong people behind the scenes; Aipac, one of the most powerful pro-Israel lobby groups in the US, said that recent US statements were a matter of ‘serious concern’ – and the US should ‘ take immediate steps to soften the tension’ – in other words, it should back off. On this extreme argument, I would say that this is evidence of the reason why the Goldstone report on Israeli genocide in Gaza issues a year ago, has yet to see the light.

The conflict that never ends

The basic problem was that the maximum Israel offered was less than the minimum the Palestinians could accept.

Israel offered the Gaza Strip a large part of the West Bank, plus extra land from the Negev desert while keeping major settlement blocks and most of the East Jerusalem. It proposed Islamic guardianship of key sites in the Old City of Jerusalem and contributions to a fund for Palestinian refugees.

The Palestinians, who wanted to start with a reversion to the lines of 1967, offered the Israelis rights over the Jewish quarter of the Old City and wanted recognition of the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees.

Peace hopes blown over with Arafat’s death

In the 40 years since the Middle East war of June 1967, there have been many peace plans and many negotiations but most of them if not all have failed. Why negotiate, when you are strong enough to simply get whatever you want by yourself? If you look at past events and analyse them you might notice that Israel never truly wanted to negotiate when there was a chance to do so. In 1993, The PLO leader Yasser Arafat finally agreed on the recognition of the Israeli state ‘in his letter to Yitzhak Rabin Yasser Arafat stated: The PLO recognises the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security’ but asked for a withdrawal of the Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza, a request that has been ignored. Seven years later, another peaceful talk took place between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat to speed up the withdrawal but the negotiation failed for the second time when Barak said that he would not commit to a subsequent government with what he called the “ideas” coming out of the talks.

After the death of Arafat, Hamas and other Palestinian rejectionist groups, who took over the Palestinian authority, were unfortunately less open for negotiation. It is to say that Israel has missed its last chance of negotiating a long-term peace with Palestine. But let’s hope for the best and say only time will tell..

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Trip to wonderland

Japan; land of the strange and the unexpected has built its sakura’s in my slow beating heart. This extremely conservative but terribly erotic society gives another apprehension of a world I thought I understood quite well. In manga land everything is different; machines talk, toilets wash, trains sing and People sleep standing up. Youth there dresses smart and sexy, talks less and drinks more than any of you might think. I admit that I was amazed to see women sway hips wearing garter belt on the street and boys with girlish bags and shiny belts. Cleanliness in Japan should be a religion and newness is a virtue that makes Tokyo look so intimately impersonal. I was also impressed by the extreme game shows that amuses Japanese and by their big interest in snuff movies and wondered why violence was so praised in a country that has the lowest crime rates in the world.

After thirteen hours of flight I finally reached wonderland.  I first dropt my luggage in my guest room then went for a 30 minutes trip to Shibuya. This very lively and modern place is the favorite destination of young fashionable Japanese. But also an area where girls dress sexy and put on nice make up to flirt with guys. I admit that the flirting codes in Japan are different from the rest of the world though, but if I am not telling you more about that it is just because I did not get it myself!

Tokyo Otemachi Business District which reminds me of the transformers movie was the second place I have been to and to give you a clear picture of it, I would say that people there do not know what fast foods restaurants are. The other thing that characterises Otemachi is its massive skyscrapers, which gave me head cramp by the way.

I would personally describe Shinjuku as the twin sister of shibuya though this area is particularly famous for its sex districts and Meido cafés. It really amazed me to see hot girls paying machines for some sexual talks and boys paying waiters to do whatever they ask them for. And that goes without talking about all sorts sexual gadgets available on the market.

While getting some souvenirs for my friends I visited Asakusa-Kannon Temple. This place has small streets and very old restaurant and reminds of Montmartre, my favorite place in Paris.

I would personally describe Shinjuku as the twin sister of shibuya though this area is particularly famous for its sex districts and Meido cafés. It really amazed me to see hot girls paying machines for some sexual talks and boys paying waiters to do whatever they ask them for. And that goes without talking about all sorts sexual gadgets available on the market.

If you want to visit as many museums as you want then go to Ueno. This beautiful area concentrates most of the Tokyo’s museum and offers people a great experience of ancient and modern Japanese art. I have only been to the science museum there and will never forget the travel back in time that I had thanks to the museum’s high technology.

Odiaba is an artificial island situated at two hours away from Tokyo. This place has an exceptional aura that I fail to explain. All I can say is that this place made me realise that the only thing that cannot lie is beauty.

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I just realised how dynamic social media was. Indeed, it is something in a constant movement and change that you have to follow up constantly (With social media you are either in or out, nothing in between).  I did not get in touch for three weeks and now I hardly understand what people are talking about!

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No religion encourages violence

From my own view ; The  western media often describes Islam is as a religion that encourage violence and women oppression, but is that true? Apart from what the media tells you, what do you really know about this religion, have you ever read the Islam’s holy book Quran ? Do you know that women and man have the same rights in Islam, do you know that in Islam, killing one person is counted as killing the whole humanity. I do not want to braiwash your brains but I just think that every educated person should be more critical of the way media represent truth  and check information before asserting anything and as Syed Farid Alatas said

It is more accurate to say that all belief systems can be perverted and that there are specific social and historical conditions that result in this perversion’.

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My trip to the dark

‘The train for London Euston is boarding now at platform 3b’, is the first good news I am hearing this morning. I run to catch my train. In here everything is in movement, I have to run to catch ma love, ma friends, my words and my life.  Breathless, I board the train.  Here starts my incredible adventure, it is first gray and raining, there are birds outside but the only thing I can hear is the piercing noise of the train. Suddenly it’s black, we are passing the tunnel; I am scared. Buff out again but this time it is much brighter. It is not very green but there are nice congruous shaking hands and rolling heads. I am smiling but people in the train have strange looks, nobody is friendly and before I had time to say hello back, it is black again. This time I close my eyes and pray but it is warm, too warm. I open my eyes again. It is weird I do not recognise the place, it is not nice any more, people are running everywhere and faces are sad. I have fears and sore, I cry. But I am not sad neither happy i just wait for whatever is next. Here come the fabulous Domes, the Eiffel tower, statue of liberty, tower of Pisa, Casinos, music halls and opulent people. I smile but feel guilty, I feel just ‘other’, the other I so hated for a long long time. Another tunnel again, this time my eyes remain open. I am not scared anymore I am a big girl now… Here I am, into the wild, with a little thought but no pen and no paper, I felt bad and was happy that the tunnel comes again. It came but this time dark never ends.

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Defamation cases in England are more costly and frequent than in the rest of europe

Defamation can have very negative impact on people’s life or institutions’ reputation. However this should not be a reason for people in the UK to sue anybody at anytime. Defamation cases in England are 140 times more costly than in the rest of Europe, and can completely ruin the person or institution sued. I think that the UK libel laws must be reviewed and relaxed a bit because at this point is can strongly jeopardise the so popular UK freedom of speech.

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‘BRUM’S BIG LITTER SHAME’ story is still news

‘BRUM’S BIG LITTER SHAME’ article appeared on the on the Birmingham Evening Mail in July 2002. Nine years has passed now and I can still see dirty streets and black bags in areas like Perry Barr. I think that before investing more on recycling the council should first improve its waste collection services!

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My new role as election team’s member

Last week I have been designated as member of Birmingham recycled election team and have been allocated the job of finding out the environmental policies of the MP in Erdington, Birmingham.

I have been suggested several ways of doing this such as;

  • Arranging a meeting with the MP
  • seeing what local organisations have to say about this MP
  • Watching what he’s doing, where he’s going, what he’s saying
  • Looking at his voting records and approaching him as follow ups about policies he has not mentioned

The first think I did though was to do some research on Sion Simon, the Erdington’s MP since 2001. But while quickly scanning his website I have only found four articles out of forty that talked about environment (articles from January 2009 till March 2010). That is a bit surprising when you know that environmental issues are at the heart of many current debates. The only possible explanation I could think of is that the constituency has serious employment and housing problems which might distract its MP’s from environmental issues but before asserting anything I prefer to wait for Sion’s email.

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Boycott press releases

I have read much about the damping down of journalism and the fact that journalists were increasingly relying on press releases, but never truly confirmed that until I found three very similar articles in two of the most respected papers in the UK; The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.  I hope I will have enough time to the write to editors of the both newspapers. But please do the same, if just like me, you have read the two broadsheets on Friday 26th March 2010, and had noticed the same thing.

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