Sometimes you have to look at your opponent’s propaganda to get a realistic sense of your own side’s weaknesses—call it an inoculation against groupthink. A case in point is this Aug. 21 analysis of the recent court ruling on the… Read moreRuling in surveillance scandal headed for overturn?
Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos raided a supposed Hezbollah stronhold in the Bekaa Valley Aug. 20 in what Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called a “naked violation” of the UN-backed truce. Three Hezbollah guerrillas were reportedly killed in a dawn firefight with… Read moreFighting in Bekaa Valley—despite Lebanon ceasefire
Hard to say if this is more bizarre or terrifying. Talk about the banality of evil. What about the evil of banality? From Reuters, Aug. 21: MUMBAI, India – A new restaurant in India’s financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler… Read moreIndia’s Jews protest Hitler-themed restaurant
India’s pro-secular website “Citizens for Justice and Peace” carries the following story on a July 27 fatwa jointly issued by a Muslim mufti (revered scholar) and a Hindu mahant (temple leader) in response to the Mumbai bombings. Chief Mufti issues… Read moreIndia: Muslim moderates declare jihad on terrorism
The growing repression in China against peasants struggling to keep their lands before the onslaught of “development”—and now against their lawyers—is clearly analogous to peasant struggles raging throughout Latin America. Note the reference to forced sterilizations of peasants in the… Read moreChina detains lawyers for peasant advocate
Irshad Manji, the notorious “Muslim Refusenik” who supposedly advocates a principled, pluralist and secular Islam, has an op-ed in the Aug. 16 New York Times—where she once again betrays her disturbing flirtation with the very imperialism that fuels the fundamentalist… Read moreIrshad Manji’s myopia
Lebanese scholar Gilbert Achcar writes via e-mail: “Many of you have certainly seen an interview allegedly done with [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah by a Turkish radical left newpsaper… I have enquired about it, and a source in Beirut in close… Read moreCounterpunch prints “fraudulent” Nasrallah interview
This July 29 report online at The American Muslim argues that an hisotric peace dialogue between Hamas leaders and Orthodox Israeli rabbis was (by strong implication, consciously) sabotaged by the Lebanon aggression. It also repeats the oft-heard claim that the… Read moreDid Lebanon aggression sabotage Palestine peace initiative?
This Aug. 17 New York Times by Scott Atran op ed ends on an ominous note, but is generally an offering of much-needed optimism. The highlighted passage notes an historic compromise in Hamas’ traditionally rejectionist position. Is Hamas Ready to… Read moreHope seen for Hamas hudna
Like Guatemala’s genocidal Romeo Lucas Garcia a few weeks back, Paraguay’s brutal former dictator Alfredo Stroessner has died a free man in comfortable exile—despite vain efforts to have him extradited back home to face justice. We have noted that there… Read moreParaguay’s Stroessner dies a free man
Another escalation is reported in the struggle of Maya campesinos in Yucatan state to hold their communial (ejidal) lands that the government seeks to expropriate for a new airport, part of the “Metropolisur” regional development plan. An Aug. 18 communique… Read moreMexico: repression in Yucatan
Ricardo Lopez Espinosa, a community leader in the conflicted central Mexican village of San Salvador Atenco and a member of the local People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) was freed from jail in Molino de Flores Aug. 17… Read moreMexico: repression in Atenco, Puebla, Queretaro
