by E.R. Bills / September 5th, 2008 ()
The other day one of my sons wanted to do something just because most of the other kids were doing it. I ceremoniously imparted to him wisdom that has been carefully passed down from generation to generation in our family. “Just because everyone else jumps off a bridge,” I said, “doesn’t mean you have to, does it?”
He looked at me like I pulled a vacuous, parental crutch out of my ear rather than making an intelligent comment. And of course he was right.
First, wanting to do something or wear …
by M. Junaid Levesque-Alam / September 5th, 2008 ()
When I was younger, my family would visit Pakistan during summer vacations. In the teeming port city of Karachi, I often went with my uncle to the local bazaar, where merchants and browsers haggled fiercely over prices underneath tan tents.
To conceal my American upbringing, I wore pants in the oppressive heat (shorts were derided as “underwear” at the time), grew my hair out of its crew-cut shape, and avoided slipping into English. If the merchants pegged me as a foreigner, my uncle warned, they would be less willing to field questions about their wares and more eager to sell …
by Media Lens / September 5th, 2008 ()
The Strain Behind The Smile
A Los Angeles Times editorial observed last month that China had persuaded world leaders to attend the Olympic Games “despite their misgivings about Beijing’s horrific human rights record both domestically and abroad”. The horror, the editors noted, could not be entirely suppressed:
“What planners in Beijing miscalculated is that no matter how well you teach performers to smile, the strain behind the lips is still detectable.”
Needless to say, no mainstream British or American journalist referred to the host nation’s “horrific human rights record” at the time of the US Games in Atlanta in 1996, or …
by Greg Elich / September 5th, 2008 ()
Gregory Elich: I’ve just finished reading your latest book, CPR for Dummies, and what a wild ride it was. Although you’ve written much fiction, you’re generally known almost solely for your political works. What avenues does fiction allow you to express that aren’t so easily done in political analysis?
Mickey Z: When readers approach a book labeled “novel,” they are usually expecting some sense of entertainment… not overt education. So that allows me to tell a story, to screw around with format, to depict events without factoring in a non-fiction reader’s skepticism and desire for documentation. If I have something …
by Bill Quigley / September 5th, 2008 ()
Hurricane Gustav killed 18 people in Louisiana and displaced 1.9 million. Over 800,000 homes are without electricity, nearly half the state, and some will not see power for up to a month.
In Haiti, Gustav killed 77 with another 8 missing and damaged nearly 15,000 homes. Tropical storm Hanna, which closely followed Gustav, killed at least another 60 people. Tens of thousands of people have sought safety on rooftops and temporary shelters. Rotting cows drift in the flood waters.
Louisiana is the poorest state in the U.S., home to nearly 4 million people, with …
by John Chuckman / September 5th, 2008 ()
I’ve reassessed my view of Sarah Palin.
My first thought about her usefulness to John McCain was that she would be a draw for disaffected Hillary supporters in a close race, but then all I knew about Sarah was that she characterized herself as a soccer, or hockey, mom.
But already I’ve learned more about her than I ever would have wanted to know, and her simple, original description of herself proves disingenuous at best, and there is the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of her appealing to Hillary supporters.
A dizzying jumble of images and anecdotes now clutters …
by Rachel Olivieri / September 4th, 2008 ()
There is no landmass on Earth quite like California. Here one finds the world’s most ancient trees, bristlecone pines, more than 4,700 years old, in the White Mountains; the tallest and largest trees, the coast redwood and giant sequoia, respectively; the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Whitney; the lowest and hottest place in the Western Hemisphere, Death Valley; the largest western hemisphere estuary, the Bay Delta; an 800-mile coastline; the most irrigated acres; the most endangered species in the U.S.; the most diverse geology and biodiversity in the U.S.; and the greatest, most ecologically destructive water projects …
by Zohair M. Abu Shaban / September 4th, 2008 ()
As a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, I could not have been more proud to learn last June that I had earned a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States.
As a child, I would wonder how televisions, computers and washing machines actually worked. I took this fascination to the Islamic University of Gaza, the only Gazan university offering a degree in electrical engineering. There, I developed an ECG monitoring system that enables patients’ hearts to be monitored at home through a personal computer and an Internet link. I won the university prize for distinguished projects for my …
by Osama Dawoud / September 4th, 2008 ()
Not many people in the Gaza Strip spend their time thinking about Utah’s Great Salt Lake. I have been dreaming of it for months. This year, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Utah to study in the department of civil and environmental engineering. Palestinians in Gaza suffer from critical water and environmental contamination problems. I planned to focus my Utah education on water resources and environmental engineering so that I could return home and help to alleviate these problems. But I will not be attending this fall. On the basis of secret evidence conveyed by the …
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson / September 4th, 2008 ()
Question: What’s the difference between a loan shark and a credit card company?
Answer: The loan shark wants his money on time.
Now some will claim that there are many other differences, namely blackmail and threat of violence. But exactly which entity are they referring to?
Isn’t the menace to one’s credit score or the garnishment of wages just legally dressed extortion? Moreover, the growing amount of suicides attributed to crushing debt indicates the psychological violence credit cards can most definitely inflict.
This of course is where my libertarian friends would stop the press and begin condescending to me about personal responsibility. …
by Neve Gordon / September 4th, 2008 ()
Eighteen-year-old Sahar Vardi is currently in an Israeli military prison. She is being punished for the crime of refusing to be conscripted into the Israeli military.
A few weeks before her imprisonment she wrote Israel’s Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, explaining her decision to become a conscientious objector. “I have been to the occupied Palestinian territories many times, and even though I realize that the soldier at the checkpoint is not responsible for Israel’s oppressive policies, that soldier is still responsible for his conduct…” She summed up her letter to Barak with the following words: “The bloody cycle in which …
by Madis Senner / September 4th, 2008 ()
It is the failure of free markets and Reaganomics that is driving up the prices of oil, food and just about everything else. Instead of making markets efficient, free market policies such as deregulation have made special interests richer and made the majority of people vulnerable to market manipulations by speculators and large corporations.
The solution to reducing the price of gas and basic foodstuffs begins with educating the public about the failure of free market ideologies. As progressives, we need to show how Reaganomics and free markets have created the mess in which we now find ourselves. We can …
by Joshua Frank / September 3rd, 2008 ()
On April 4, 2004, Casey Sheehan was killed in action in Iraq. Since then, his mother, Cindy Sheehan, has traveled the country to speak out against the war in Iraq and build an antiwar movement capable of challenging the U.S. war machine.
Frustrated by the complicity of the Democratic Party in waging the war, Sheehan decided this year to run as an independent candidate against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her San Francisco district.
Joshua Frank is co-author with Jeffrey St. Clair of the recent collection Red State Rebels. He recently caught up with Sheehan to discuss her bid.
***
Joshua Frank: Cindy, …
An Interview with Michael Hudson
by Mike Whitney / September 3rd, 2008 ()
Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase & Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world’s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens & Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich’s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas …
by Jason Leopold / September 3rd, 2008 ()
The political career of Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential pick, has been marked by conflicts, score-settling and her own claim that she faces “enemies — powerful enemies.”
But the 44-year-old first-term Alaska governor is a favorite of right-wing Christian groups and was hailed Friday by one organization as “a true Christian” who is “pro-life and pro-marriage.” She also has favored the teaching of creationism in Alaska’s schools.
After the surprise announcement Friday, the McCain campaign tried to frame Palin as a reformer who has taken on corruption in Alaska. However, an examination of her career as a small-town mayor and …
by Bill Quigley / September 3rd, 2008 ()
New Orleans — The good news is that nearly two million people evacuated and were spared the direct hit of Gustave. Our sisters and brothers in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who were not able to leave the point of the storm, lost over 100 lives. The people of the U.S. were fortunate to be able to leave.
The bad news is that most people have not been allowed to return.
Since the storm, New Orleans and numerous other coastal communities have continued 24-hour curfews and prohibited people from returning by posting law enforcement at all entrances.
Officials …
by Ashley Smith / September 3rd, 2008 ()
On the eve of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St Paul, the police and other security forces waged a campaign of repression and intimidation against activists who came from across the U.S. to send a message to the Republican Party.
Police carried out preemptive raids and detentions designed to deny people their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly. And in one incident, police also targeted guests and participants in the Veterans for Peace/Iraq Veterans Against the War conventions held at the Ramada Mall of America outside the Twin Cities.
Near the conclusion of the conference, police tailed a …
by Jonathan Cook / September 3rd, 2008 ()
Nilin — The window through which Salam Amira, 16, filmed the moment when an Israeli soldier shot from close range a handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainee has a large hole at its centre with cracks running in every direction.
“Since my video was shown, the soldiers shoot at our house all the time,” she said. The shattered and cracked windows at the front of the building confirm her story. “When we leave the windows open, they fire tear gas inside too.”
Her home looks out over the Israeli road block guarding the only entrance to the village of Nilin, …
by Gilad Atzmon / September 3rd, 2008 ()
Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Shlomo Sand, opens his remarkable study of Jewish nationalism quoting Karl W. Deutsch: “A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours.”When And How The Jewish People Was Invented? Shlomo Sand, Resling: 2008, pg 11.
As simple or even simplistic as it may sound, the quote above eloquently summarises the figment of reality entangled with modern Jewish nationalism and especially within the concept of Jewish identity. It obviously points the finger at the collective mistake Jews tend to make whenever referring to …
by Eric Walberg / September 2nd, 2008 ()
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a gritty, straight-talking 30-minute interview with CNN this week in Russian. It was not translated or reported on widely in the US media, which is a shame. He charged that US military personnel were in South Ossetia during the attack, and lectured about such topics as Ossetia’s long membership in the Russian empire (since 1801) and Ossetians’ age-old resentment of Georgian chauvinism, especially following the 1917 Russian revolution and the 1990 declaration of Georgian independence. A South Ossetian legislator has already mooted the possibility that it will eventually become part of the Russian Federation. …
