...it turns out that this bloody road we walk...is not as cyclical as we may have once thought. This road is not a circle, it’s a downward spiral, leading to new lows, which, I’m sad to say, we’ll be unlucky enough to experience.
thesmithian-blog reblogged
I’m 100% Palestinian.
I’ve spent many years embarrassed about that. I used to ask my parents to not talk a lot around my friends because of their thick accent. I was so afraid of stereotypes that I tried telling people I was Italian but soon I realized how wrong that is. There’s nothing wrong with being middle eastern!! I don’t speak Arabic fluently, so I’ve always had a hard time communicating with my relatives and never felt like I belonged to my culture. I’m currently trying to learn to write in Arabic and feel more and more prideful of my people.
I’m so happy to see everyone’s beautiful faces here! Happy Asian appreciation day and happy april~
[meaningful glance]
The marginalization of foreign-language cinema in the best picture category is one of Oscar’s unspoken shortcomings: It’s like the so-called World Series in baseball. The truth is, with very few exceptions, only American teams play the Oscar game.
more.
We are arguing, but we are arguing inside the room...
Tzipi Livni, Israel's chief representative at the Israeli/Palestinian talks
She may have been born a Palestinian Lebanese American, but in Said’s mind she grew up first as a WASP, having been baptized Episcopalian in Boston and attending the wealthy Upper East Side girls’ school Chapin...
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...there have been no new construction tenders issued for the West Bank since President Barack Obama visited (in March)...”
Yariv Oppenheimer, head of Peace Now
in light of the following:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has quietly halted new building projects in the occupied West Bank in what Reuters describes as “an apparent bid to help U.S. efforts to revive peace talks with the Palestinians.”
Breaking ground last week and set to open in the Fall of 2014 as a project of the Welfare Association, the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Palestine, is “dedicated to the exploration and understanding of the culture, history and society of Palestine and the Palestinian people.”
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The president of the United States stood...in Jerusalem, and with empathy and...bluntness that has been absent for so long we forgot it could exist, told Israelis: The occupation can't go on. It's destroying your own future. And besides that, Palestinians have "a right to … justice" and "to be a free people in their own land." If you don't think this is a breakthrough, you are letting naïve pessimism overcome realism. Yes, it's true that one speech will be worth nothing if not followed by intense American diplomacy. That comment has become banal. A realistic assessment is that Obama's visit, and the speech, were the opening act of an American diplomatic effort—a near perfect opening.
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...the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and justice must also be recognized. Put yourself in their shoes—look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day. It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their home. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.
President Obama
about which New York's Jonathan Chait says
Obama [argued] for peace not merely as a strategic necessity for Israel but as a basic human right. This passage would have struck terror in Israeli hearts had Obama not preceded it with a lengthy affirmation of Zionism
and more.
Salafi fundamentalists (who are small fringe in Tunis) showed up at a language school in Tunisia’s capital on Wednesday to attempt to stop the filming of a video clip of the Harlem Shake...One of the Salafis had on military khakis and carried a molotov cocktail, which he did not use. They shouted at the students that their brothers in Palestine were suffering and they were dancing. The students at the language school drove off the Salafis and went on with their filming.
more.
...[Oussama Diab] portrays three women, each with their eyes and heads covered, yet [it's] the simple difference of circumstance that defines whether these women are engaged in a free act or constrained by it...
more.