occupation

I was raised in the tranquil, spacious, sometimes ghostly-empty city of Adelaide, Australia. Like many activists, there was something easy, privileged, even boring about my upbringing that made me determined to work with people at the other end of the scale.

So I find myself now working as a human rights activist with the International Solidatiry Movement (ISM), in Palestine. ISM supports Palestinian civil and human rights, and provides an international presence wherever Palestinians are practising non-violent resistance to the military occupation.

By Hamish Chitts

On August 20, Afghanistan will conduct its second presidential election under the US-led occupation. Current Afghan President Hamid Karzai is the clear frontrunner in the election, despite a December Gallup poll having found that only 10% of Afghans supported Karzai’s government. Karzai was handpicked by the US to head the Afghan government during the US-led invasion in late 2001.