"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." ~ 
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Any world is an illusion, but within illusion, another world, a better world, seems possible. In the material world, the one we think is real, the divide between the 'left' and 'right' is an artificial one. This divide serves to keep us separate from each other and prevents us from seeing clearly that we in fact have shared interests and a common enemy. A better way to approach economy, politics, culture and society would be to take note of the ways in which our societies are divided horizontally: the interests of the few (the elite) and the many (ordinary people). The elite wants to oppress and exploit the rest of us. In a material sense, they are our enemy. They are working to establish their totalitarian New World Order. World government is the last thing ordinary people need. We need free and open communities with equal rights for everyone and a profound respect for the many differences between us. We want freedom rather than security. We want peace, not war. We want truth, dignity and justice.
For Israel, a reckoning
John Pilger
Israeli soldiers prepare white phosphorus 155mm artillery shells (light green) as troops
keep position on the Israel-Gaza border. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images
A new global movement is challenging Israel's violations of international law with the same strategies that were used against apartheid.
The farce of the climate summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine.
The Palestinians' resistance to the theft of their country reached a critical moment in 2001 when a UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, identified Israel as an apartheid state. To Nelson Mandela, justice for the Palestinians is "the greatest moral issue of the age". The Palestinian civil society call for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) was issued on 9 July 2005, in effect reconvening the great, non-violent movement that swept the world and brought the scaffolding of African apartheid crashing down.
“Through decades of occupation and dispossession," wrote Mustafa Barghouti, a wise voice of Palestinian politics, "90 per cent of the Palestinian struggle has been non-violent . . . A new generation of Palestinian leaders [now speaks] to the world precisely as Martin Luther King did. The same world that rejects all use of Palestinian violence, even clear self-defence, surely ought not begrudge us the non-violence employed by men such as King and Gandhi."
