http://www.myantiwar.org/Channel/id/1 Latest news from ZNet keyvan@myantiwar.org http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=101&ItemID=14702 Free speech zones. Taser guns. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=14701 New Politics: The year 2008 is the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel and of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe. What do you see as the Israeli goal and has it changed over the years?   Bashir Abu-Manneh: Israel’s goal has been a constant: Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=14700 Consider the debate among four Democratic presidential candidates on ABC News last Saturday night. In the previous week, the price of a barrel of oil briefly touched $100, unemployment hit 5%, the stock market had the worst three-day start since the Great Depression, and the word “recession” was in the headlines and in the air. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=14695 “If we want to talk of socialism,” says Argenis Loreto, “we must first resolve the people’s most urgent needs: water in their homes, accessible health care, easy access to housing.” In the Venezuelan municipality of Libertador (state of Carabobo), of which Argenis is mayor, “we have 90% poverty. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=14694 David Cromwell is a Scottish writer, activist and oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre in Britain. David Edwards is also a UK writer who focuses on human rights, the environment and the media. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=14693 The President’s visit to the Middle East this week will show once and for all that status quo lives on under the attempt to validate the old saying that an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. In this case the image came seven years too late. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14692 In Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, 2008 was ushered in with an announcement of the 2007 death toll of women targeted by Islamist militias. City officials reported on December 31 that 133 women were killed and mutilated last year, their bodies dumped in trash bins with notes warning others against “violating Islamic teachings…” But ambulance drivers who are hired to troll the city streets in the early mornings to collect the bodies confirm what most residents believe: the actual numbers are much higher. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14691 If the U.S. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=14690 “Although ‘change’ may come, it will be at the direction of the rich.” The scam of this still-new century enthralls and envelopes the nation, a narrowly-packaged farce in which political twins Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pretend they are not joined at the hip on every public policy issue that has been allowed to enter the corporate media-vetted discourse: health care, Iraq, trade. 2008-01-09 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14699 A primary stated justification for continuing the US-led military occupation of Iraq is that a withdrawal of Western forces would result in a “bloodbath.” Without the responsible, benevolent oversight of the US-led forces, the rhetoric goes, Islamo-fascists in Iraq would simply slaughter each other. 2008-01-08 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=14698 December 25 2007: Seven churches, Catholic, Protestant, Pentacostal, Independent . burned in Barakhama village, Kandhamal district, central Orissa. 2008-01-08 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=14697 The land of the Indus, the crossing of the Himalayas, Karakorum and the Hindukush, the land of the Pathans, the Hazaras, the Saraiki speaking plains, the prosperous central Punjab, the rugged Baluchistan and the dominating urban landscapes of tens of million souls comprise the complex diversity of this nation. Pakistani identity distraught with mistrust between the Muslim & the non, the Punjabi & the other and the religious & the secular. 2008-01-08 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=14696 Washington – Amid reports that the administration of U.S. 2008-01-08 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=108&ItemID=14685 What better way to start the new year than to sock it to grandma and grandpa with big price increases? That may not have been the exact nature of the conversation at the insurance companies that participate in the Medicare prescription drug plan, but it sure was the outcome, as premiums are scheduled to rise by an average of almost 25 percent in 2008. The sharp price hikes for 2008 could mark the beginning of the end of the relatively good news in the drug plan’s first two years of existence. 2008-01-08 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=14684 I argued in a previous article that Washington’s case for war against Iran relied more on rhetoric than on evidence, was opposed by the military, American and international public opinions, and was complicated by Israel’s inability to crush Hizbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war. But that this did not mean that a Washington-supported Israeli attack against Iran was not being planned. 2008-01-08