Milne: Climate of suspicion26 Dec 2007Perhaps it’s not surprising that someone who describes himself as phobic about the concept of Islamophobia and thinks that the invasion of Iraq is a “subject of purely historical interest” might struggle to grasp why the relentless campaign of hostile media stories about the Muslim community is toxic and dangerous—or recognise that it is driven by a neoconservative agenda about terror and war. Last week Andrew Anthony, author of this year’s summer reading of choice for liberal hawks (The Fall-Out: how a guilty liberal lost his innocence), a href=”http://commentisfree.
Soldz: Fallujah, the Information War, and U.S. Propaganda:26 Dec 2007Now receded into distant memory for many, the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah, accompanied by the al Sadr uprising in the south, was a decisive turning point in the Iraq occupation. These battles demonstrated to much of the world that the occupation was deeply unpopular among many Iraqis, who were willing and able to fight the occupation to a stalemate.
Bidwai: Modi’s modus operandi failing in Gujarat26 Dec 2007(17 December 2007) After the initial forecasts that Bharatiya Janata Party was set to win the elections in the Indian state of Gujarat, the tide seems to be turning against it. Is the tide turning in Gujarat? A month ago, most Gujarat politicians, social scientists, activists, bureaucrats, and citizen.
Baker: Santa Claus Comes to Wall Street26 Dec 2007Things have not gone well on Wall Street this year. Depending on the year-end news, the stock market looks at best to have eked out a small gain for the year.
Nasser: A Peace-killing Linkage, De-linkage25 Dec 2007Linking the “aliyah” to what the Jewish literature has been describing as Eretz Israel or Yisrael HaShleima (Greater Israel) to the Israeli colonial settlement of the Palestinian land, which the Hebrew state occupied in 1967, while at the same time negating the Palestinian Right of Return, is torpedoing whatever prospect is left for a peaceful solution for the Arab – Israeli conflict, undermining the latest U.S.
Lendman: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade25 Dec 2007The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was an American contingent of about 2800 volunteers who fought on the side of the Second Spanish Republic during the country’s 1936 – 1939 Civil War against the fascist Nationalist rebellion under General Francisco Franco. From 1937 through 1938, it aimed to stop international fascism under Hitler and Mussolini that led to WW II.
Raina: Gujarat25 Dec 2007India’s misbegotten ‘modernity’ has won another fascist round in Gujarat. Unlike the mellow inclusivity of Nehruvian enlightenment that strenuously refused the bastardization of variegated cultural refinement and richness, that resisted a gluttonously rapacious leap for the mainchance, leaving the underdog to his/her own devices, that remained wisely wary of militarizing the nation’s psyche, the Modi-propagated version of modernity is a beastly mutant wrought through the unlovely embrace between facelessly uncaring technology and atavistic impulses of the ugliest kind—a creature unsurprisingly midwifed by India’s ‘reputed’ corporate fat cats.
Flanders: The Kite Runner:25 Dec 2007(December 15, 2007) Within the first five minutes of the newly released film The Kite Runner, the leitmotif is laid out in a Karachi-to-California telephone call. Come home to Afghanistan, the protagonist, a young writer “Amir” is told by an ailing uncle.
Loeb: Dick Cheney’s Fondest Pipe Dream, Revisited25 Dec 2007Ever since Hillary Clinton supported the reckless Kyl-Lieberman Iran bill, her Democratic competitors have been blasting her for her stand, and rightly so. By defining Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, a core branch of the Iranian military, as a foreign terrorist organization, the bill put the U.
Edwards: Manufacturing Threats24 Dec 2007News that British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons had been jailed in Sudan after allowing her pupils to call a teddy bear Mohammed fed straight into the UK media’s hate factory and its “war for civilisation”.The Gibbons story was mentioned in a massive 257 articles in UK national newspapers in the first week, providing an excuse to boost claims of “genocide” in Sudan in 10 of these.
Tutu: South Africa found peace, why not Middle East?24 Dec 2007December 21, 2007: At the height of the struggle, when apartheid’s repression was at its most vicious and it seemed as if the apartheid rulers were firmly ensconced in power, we turned to the inspiration of our Hebrew tradition and antecedents.I could have spent a great deal of time rehearsing how I experienced a deja-vu when I saw a security checkpoint at which Palestinians had to negotiate most of their lives, that I was reminded so painfully of the same checkpoints in apartheid South Africa.
Levy: Meanwhile, in the West Bank24 Dec 2007Don’t let the quiet fool you: It is imaginary. While all eyes are on Gaza, the impression has been created, under the aegis of a media turning a blind eye, that the West Bank is quiet.
Street: Looking for Bill Clinton in Columbus Junction:24 Dec 2007Columbus Junction is a small Iowa town located about 35 miles south of Iowa City in the rolling hills of Louisa County. I went there last Friday to ask Bill Clinton a question about his wife’s position on the United States’ colonial occupation of Iraq.
Nawa: The Gunmen of Kabul24 Dec 2007In September, on a tree-lined street in the most expensive neighborhood in Kabul, dozens of men rolled out of armored vehicles in front of a little-known U.S.
Abu-Jamal: A Christmas Cage24 Dec 2007After recovering from his gunshot wound and surgery, Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote “A Christmas Cage.” for Philadelphia’s Community newspaper (February 1982).
Barker: Global Democracy Manipulators23 Dec 2007The first two parts of this four part series introduced the new head of the UN Democracy Fund, Roland Rich, and provided a critical examination of the ‘democratic’ background of key former UN staffer, Mark Malloch Brown. The penultimate part of this series investigated the history of the UN Democracy Fund itself, while this part examines the ‘democratic’ credentials of some of the recipients of the UN Democracy Fund’s first round of funding.
Wilpert: Venezuela’s Revolution Checked23 Dec 2007With the surprising loss of the constitutional reform referendum in December (by a minimal vote difference of 1.3%) Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution reached a turning point.
Whitney: Chiquita in the dock for murder23 Dec 2007For lawyer Terry Collingwood, capital punishment has its place, especially if it means “the death of a truly evil corporation.” The reference was to Ohio-based Chiquita Corp.
Albert: Istanbul Talk for Istanbul METU Alumni Association23 Dec 2007(5 December 2007) What is the population of Turkey? 70 million? The population of US where I come from is roughly 300 million. How many people do we need on our side to create a new Turkish society? How many people do we need on our side in US to create a new US society? Does anybody want to have a guess? How many do you think we need to have? Nobody knows the answer for sure, of course.
Sainath: India 2007: high growth, low development23 Dec 2007The good news is that India’s falling to rank 128 in the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is not really a decline. Even though it was ranked 126 last year.
Escobar: Embedded with power – Part 223 Dec 2007In Part 1 of this interview Pepe Escobar discussed the way in which Hugo Chavez is portrayed in the mainstream media. In this second part of the interview he discusses the context of the corporate media more generally and some of the factors which lead to its fatal inability to reflect either reality or truth in the cases of Iraq and st1:count.
Meister: “Know Your Class”23 Dec 2007When Jack Hall died, flags were flown at half-staff throughout Hawaii, longshoremen closed West Coast ports for 24 hours and thousands of others in Hawaii and along the west coast of United States and Canada also stopped work to show their respect. span style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: verdana; ms.
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