I can explain why so many Americans are angry about President Obama and dislike or hate him with passion, and why it has little to do with his actions and policies. But first I must examine the confluence of two historical inflection points that explains so much resentment and opposition to Obama. Continue reading
Egypt’s revolution is considered to be a startling new development, the result of the Internet age. But it is actually more like the traditional revolutionary scenario predicted by Karl Marx in the mid-19th century, a desperate protest against mass poverty resulting from rampant capitalism. Its association with the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and Russia in the 1990s, as epitomised by the adoption of the Serbian Otpor’s clenched fist masthead, is thus superficial. A more apt comparison in economic terms is with the Philippines, also a poor country with a large peasant population. Continue reading
A pervading sense of awe seems to be engulfing Arab societies everywhere. What is underway in the Arab world is greater than simply revolution in a political or economic sense–it is, in fact, shifting the very self-definition of what it means to be Arab, both individually and collectively. Continue reading
The best-laid plans of America’s sickest minds are unraveling before their bloodshot evil eyes. The further the CIA mind-twisters stretch in trying to make their crazy “militant Islamist” scheme work somewhere in the Muslim world, the more the edges ravel on the magnificiant whole-cloth of lies that they have so lovingly woven for us. We should all be allowed to smile just a little when the CIA’s dumbest “mind-fuck” plans fail, if it were not for the fact that they have gambled our futures on their plots. Continue reading
Historian Thomas Carlyle said “a lie cannot live.” However, Mark Twain casually remarked, “It shows that he did not know how to tell them.” Continue reading
Central to Egypt’s revolution was a tiny group of Serbian activists Otpor (resistance), who adapted nonviolent tactics of in the late 1990s and successfully forced Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to resign in 2000. Egyptian youth in the 6 April Youth Movement even adopted their clenched fist symbol, bringing Otpor once again into world headlines and TV screens. Continue reading
Remember the neoconservatives’ plan of “domino effect” following the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq? It was supposed to be followed by the toppling of other “unfriendly” heads of “rogue states” such as those ruling Iran and Syria who do not cater to the US-Israeli interests in the Middle East. It was not meant to threaten the “friendly” regimes that rule Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain and their cohorts that have been firmly aligned with the United States. Indeed, it was supposed to replace the former type of “noncompliant” regimes with the latter type of “client states” that would go along with the US-Israeli geopolitical designs in the region. Continue reading
While protestors risk their lives, battling in violent confrontation with the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, analysists estimate that nearly a million barrels of Libyan oil a day have been removed from world markets recently, reports the New York Times. And of course we have the standard whine that “Investors fear that more oil production could be disrupted as the unrest spreads to other crucial producing nationals like Algeria.” So which would the world have, the tyrants or the sweet crude? I think I know the answer. Continue reading
While Egypt’s revolution was very much about domestic matters—bread and butter, corruption, repression—its most immediate effects have been international. Not for a long time has Egypt loomed so large in the region, to both friend and foe. At least 13 of the 22 Arab League countries are now affected: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Continue reading
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his supporters in the Fatah party want us to believe that dramatic changes are underway in the occupied Palestinian territories. Continue reading
The regional deck has been reshuffled and is no longer in Israel’s favor, causing serious consternation in Tel Aviv. Continue reading
It is being described as carnage, a massacre, street bloodshed, violence against Libyan civilians by their own leader, government and regime. Libyan leader Mommar Al Qaddafi is going after his own people in a desperate bid to stay in power by committing the worst atrocities over the country of 6.4 million. Continue reading
The international Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia on Middle East peace and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) seem set on an agenda that perceives September 2011 as an historical political watershed deadline. Among the partners to the Quartet—sponsored Palestinian—Israeli “peace process,” practically deadlocked since the collapse of the US, Palestinian and Israeli trilateral summit in Camp David in 2000, only the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu seems adamant to set a completely different agenda that renders any endeavor by the Quartet to revive the process a non—starter, thus dooming the September deadline beforehand as another missed opportunity for peace making. Continue reading
ASMARA, Eritrea—As the people of South Sudan celebrate their independence ominous storm clouds are gathering over their heads. Despite all the hypocritical applause from the UN and governments in the West, South Sudan today stands on the brink of disaster. Continue reading
SHATILA CAMP, Beirut—Lebanese opponents of civil rights for Palestinian Refugees often use less objective and more crude wording to define “tawtin” (“settlement”) than is normally employed in civil society discussions. During last summer’s debate in parliament, which failed to enact laws that would allow the world’s oldest and largest refugee community the basic civil right to work and to own a home, the “tawtin or return” discussion took on strident and dark meanings, which were largely effective in frightening much of the Lebanese public from supporting even these modest humanitarian measures. Continue reading
Western media always welcomes the overthrow of a dictator—great headline news—but this instance was greeted with less than euphoria by Western—especially American—leaders, who tried to soft-peddle it much as did official Egyptian media until the leader fled the palace. Continue reading
Now that the Egyptian people have finally wrestled their freedom from the hands of a very stubborn regime, accolades to the revolution are pouring in from all directions. Even those who initially sided with Hosni Mubarak’s regime, or favored a neutral position, have now changed their tune. Continue reading
The history of the FBI is the history of how America—once a nation that abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions—has steadily devolved into a police state where laws are unidirectional, intended as a tool for government to control the people and rarely the other way around. Continue reading
ASMARA, Eritrea—Criminals run the International Criminal Court (ICC). These are judicial criminals whose primary task has become the instigation of chaos and war on the African continent, and almost all of the ICC’s evil deeds today are directed hence. Continue reading
The toppling of dictator Ben Ali in Tunisia in the wake of mass protests and bloody street clashes has been widely recognized as signifying a major transformation in the future of politics and geopolitics for the major countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). There is little doubt that the Tunisian experience triggered the escalation of unprecedented protests in Egypt against the Mubarak regime. The question on every media pundit’s lips is, ‘Will events in Tunisia and Egypt have a domino effect throughout the Arab world?’ Continue reading
“Zakir Hussain Shah slit the throat of his daughter Sabiha, 18, at Bara Kau in June 2002 because she had ‘dishonoured’ her family. But under Pakistan’s notorious qisas law, heirs [of a murder victim] have powers to pardon a murderer. In this case, Sabiha’s mother and brother [as Sabiha’s heirs] ‘pardoned’ the father and he was freed,” wrote Robert Fisk on 10–09–07 in The crimewave that shames the world, one segment of his multi-part feature on gynicide carried by The Independent. Continue reading
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” Though this phrase may appear to be straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, it is actually a quotation from Hollywood’s favourite Science Fiction writer, Philip K. Dick (author of the books/short stories behind Blade Runner, Total Recall, and AI). Continue reading
MADISON, Wisconsin—Douglas Horne, who served as the Senior Analyst for Military Affairs of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), has now published INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), a five-volume study of the efforts of the board to declassify documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other government organizations related to the assassination of JFK. Continue reading
True to its post-9/11 government-sanctioned role as US war propaganda headquarters, Hollywood has released “Black Hawk Down,” a fictionalized account of the tragic 1993 US raid in Somalia. The Pentagon assisted with the production, pleased for an opportunity to “set the record straight.” The film is a lie that compounds the original lie that was the operation itself. Continue reading
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