Damen Ward, ‘Legislation, Repugnancy and the Disallowance of Colonial Laws: The Legal Structure of Empire and Lloyd’s Case (1844)’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 41 (2010).

Abstract:

The imperial government had the ability to disallow New Zealand colonial ordinances that were “repugnant to the laws of England”. “Repugnancy” did not operate as a clear legal criterion; the British government could take into account a range of political factors. Instructions to governors were sometimes used to avoid potential legal questions about the impact of disallowance. Henry Samuel Chapman’s judgment in Lloyd’s case (1844) provides a basis for exploring the legal, administrative and political practices surrounding the disallowance of colonial laws. Judges’ and officials’ views on how disallowance took effect show the interaction between political authority, political communication, and legal institutions in a Crown Colony. Lloyd’s case, and Chapman’s extra-judicial writing about repugnancy, help illustrate changing colonial views of the British imperial constitution across the mid-nineteenth century.


Carl J. Guarneri, ‘Mapping the Anglo-American Settler Empire’, Diplomatic History 35, 1 (2011).

In the nineteenth century, British imperial spokesmen routinely referred to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as “settler colonies,” where Britons migrated in large numbers, dominated indigenous peoples, and successfully transplanted European ways. The term distinguished these “white dominions” from colonial possessions like India, where a small cadre of British officials governed a vast non-European majority, and local cultures remained relatively intact. In recent decades, scholars from several disciplines have revisited the settler-society paradigm. Political scientists compare the dynamics of federal polities and legal regimes among British-origin settler societies. Anthropologists and postcolonial scholars take a critical approach to “settler colonialism” by examining the rhetoric and actions of European newcomers who pushed aside native peoples. Environmental historians trace the wholesale biological transfers that remade the New World temperate-zone ecologies into “Neo-Europes,” a term that was coined by Alfred Crosby in 1986


fire

01Jan11
In the early morning hours of 29 December 2010, settlers set fire to a family’s dwelling in Susiya village.

maori origins

30Dec10

TVNZ:

A New Zealand historian says the idea of Maori being indigenous may need to be reconsidered.

Research led by Janet Wilmshurst from New Zealand’s Landcare Research, and Atholl Anderson, from the Australian National University, suggests Maori first settled in New Zealand between 1210 and 1385 AD.

That is in contrast to Maori genealogy, which traces the first arrivals back to 800 AD.

The research, published in the American journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, claims previous studies used radio carbon-dated materials that carried a high level of error. It says the research it has done on radio carbon-dated plant fossils dramatically shortens the “chronology for the colonisation of East Polynesia”.

Professor of History at AUT, Paul Moon, said the evidence uncovered is based on 1400 radiocarbon dates from 47 Pacific Islands.

“There are some academics who’ve said that Polynesians first arrived here in 800AD and that figure now looks to be unlikely,” Moon told ONE News.

He said if Maori reached New Zealand just 300 years before Europeans, there may be questions from some quarters over the idea of Maori being indigenous.

“Some people will say if they’ve ‘only’ been here for 700 years, 600 years, some people might say ‘well they’re not really indigenous’, and that’s a dangerous argument,” said Moon.

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PAST IS PRESENT: SETTLER COLONIALISM IN PALESTINE

7th Annual Conference

5- 6 March | Brunei Gallery | School of Oriental and African Studies – London

organised by
SOAS Palestine Society

and hosted by the
London Middle East Institute

For over a century, Zionism has subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation, and erasure in the pursuit of a new colonial Israeli society. Too often, this Palestine ‘Question’ has been framed as unique; a national, religious, and/or liberation struggle with little semblance to colonial conflicts elsewhere. The two-day conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, seeks to reclaim settler colonialism as the central paradigm from which to understand Palestine. It asks: what are the socio-political, economic and spatial processes and mechanisms of settler colonialism in Palestine, and what are the logics underpinning it? By unearthing the histories and geographies of the Palestinian experience of settler colonialism, this conference does not only chart possibilities for understanding Palestine within comparative settler colonial analyses. Rather, it also seeks to break open frameworks binding Palestine, re-align the Palestinian movement within a universal history of decolonisation, and imagine new possibilities for Palestinian resistance, solidarity and common struggle.

Day One: Saturday, 5th March

Registration and Refreshments: 9.00-9.30

Opening and Keynote: 9.30-10.15

Hassan Hakimian – London Middle East Institute

New Jews for Old: Eliminationist Zionism and the Peopling of Palestine
Patrick Wolfe – La Trobe University

Session One – Empire, Settler Colonialism and Zionism: 10.15-11.45

Chair: Nelida Fuccaro

Playing the Zionist Card: The British Empire and the Middle East
John Newsinger – Bath Spa University

Literature of Settler Societies: Albert Camus, S. Yizhar, and Amos Oz
Gabriel Piterberg – University of California, Los Angeles

The Settler Colonialism Paradigm and its History in Revolutionary Palestinian Resistance Literature: Poetry and Politics
Naseer Aruri – University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Refreshments: 11.45-12.00

Session Two – Zionism Destroys to Replace: 12.00-13.30

Chair: Laleh Khalili – School of Oriental and African Studies

The Palestinian Labour Market and the Politics of Zionist Settler Colonialism
Gershon Shafir – University of California, San Diego

The Erasure of the Native
Ilan Pappe – University of Exeter

The Second Phase of the Settler Colonial Conquest of Palestine: The 1967 Allon Plan and the Search for a Zionist ‘Settlement’
Gilbert Achcar – School of Oriental and African Studies

Session Three – Zionism Controls the Native: 14.30-16.00

Chair: Ruba Salih – School of Oriental and African Studies

Chronicles of a Cultural Destruction: The Appropriation of Palestinian Knowledge during the 1948 War
Gish Amit – Ben-Gurion University

Indigenous Citizens and the Contradictions of Status amongst Palestinians in Israel
As’ad Ghanem – Ibn Khaldun, The Arab Association for Research and Development

Frontier Wars and Robotic Colonisation
Eyal Weizman – Goldsmiths College

Session Four – A Political Economy of Settler Colonialism: 16.15-18.00

Chair: Elisa van Waeyenberge – School of Oriental and African Studies

A ‘Bad Lot’? Palestinian Businessmen and the British Colonial State
Sherene Seikaly – American University of Cairo

The Exploitation of the Palestinian Economy by Israel
Shir Hever – Alternative Information Center

Palestinian Capitalism, Regional Accumulation Processes and Implications for Liberation Strategy
Adam Hanieh – School of Oriental and African Studies

Day Two: Sunday 6th March 2011

Registration and Refreshments: 10.30-11.00

Keynote: 11.00-11.45

Letter from Gaza: On Colonialism, Capitalism and Resistance
Rabah Mohanna – Palestinian Legislative Council, Gaza

Session Five – Indigenous Life and the Reverberations of Settler Colonialism: 11.45-13.15Chair: Lori Allen – University of Cambridge

Counterfeit Citizenship: On the Politics of Property in Nahr El-Bared
Monika Halkort – Queen’s University, Belfast

Ethnic Cleansing in the Naqab: The Razings of the Bedouin Village of
Al-‘Araqib

Mansour Nsasra – University of Exeter

Policing, Self-Policing and Indigenous Collaboration
Mouin Rabbani – Institute of Palestine Studies

Lunch: 13.15-14.15

Session Six – Overcoming Zionism, Dismantling Settler Colonialism: 14.15-15.45 Chair: Jan Jananayagam – Tamils Against Genocide

Decolonising Settler Colonialisms
Lorenzo Veracini – Swinburne University of Technology

The Power and Pitfalls of a Support Movement: Campaigning Against the Jewish National Fund
Selma James – International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Towards Common Liberation
Mezna Qato – University of Oxford

Refreshments: 15.45-16.00

Roundtable – Unsettling (Settler) Colonialism: 16.00-18.00

Tickets
Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED – book in advance
Price: £30 (£20 concessions, and £40 organisations) – all tickets include lunch and refreshments

To buy your tickets
Online – www.soaspalsoc.org
By cheque: Send cheques payable to SOAS Palestine Society with attached note of email address to: SOAS Palestine Society, Thornhaugh Street, London, WC1H 0XG

Location

SOAS Brunei Gallery
Thornhaugh Street
Russell Square
London, WC1H 0XG

Contact
palestineconference@gmail.com
www.soaspalsoc.org


Bryan Fischer, from the American Family Association, freaking out about the UN-DRIP:

Perhaps he figures that, as an adopted Crow Indian, he will be the new chief over this revived Indian empire.

But for the other 312 million of us, I think we’ll settle for our constitutional “We the people” form of government, thank you very much.

For more on Obama’s transformation from Muslim radical to land-seizing Crow, see here.

Hat tip, Dave G.


mars society

29Dec10

The Purpose of the Mars Society

To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet. This will be done by:
  1. Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars.
  2. Support of ever more aggressive government funded Mars exploration programs around the world.
  3. Conducting Mars exploration on a private basis.

Check it out here; heck, even join the ‘task force’.


Thomas A. Koelbe and Edward Li Puma, ‘Traditional Leaders and the Culture of Governance in South Africa’, Governance 24,  1 (2011).

Abstract

The global neoliberal economic and political order impregnated the emergence of democracy in South Africa. One of the hallmarks of this order is that the capacity of the state to transform society is constrained, particularly in the rural hinterlands. The incapacity of the state to extend its grip, both economically and politically, has provided traditional leaders with an opportunity to both recast themselves as intermediaries between state and society and elevate themselves to decision makers on behalf of large communities. The article examines the way in which traditional leaders have repositioned themselves in the new democracy, what their source of support is, and why the African National Congress government has come to support these efforts.


With all its attendant cruelties, justifications, critiques, and regrets, Spanish colonizing was a narrative of the conquest of peoples living in civil societies. The narrative of English colonizing is one that progressively banishes existing inhabitants to the margins of its consciousness by denying their civic capacity, their sociability. In the English narrative the indigenous become brutes, in whose place the colonizer first desires, then actively imagines, an empty landscape to populate anew.

An extract from Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound (2010).


google ngram

23Dec10

‘When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years’.

Some graphs I whipped up:

settler | colonist | colonizer

natives | settlers

colonialism | settler colonialism

colonialism | capitalism | race