Sam Husseini

Richard Holbrooke, Lum Haxhiu

Despite being passed over for Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke is reportedly still being considered for a prominent position in the incoming Obama administration.

Shortly before the bombing of Yugoslavia began in late March 1999, Holbrooke met with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. By his own account, Holbrooke delivered the final ultimatum to Milosevic -- that if Yugoslavia didn't agree to the Rambouillet text, NATO would begin bombing.

The Rambouillet text called for a defacto occupation of Yugoslavia. On major U.S. media, after the bombing of Yugoslavia began, Holbrooke claimed that what was called for in the Rambouillet text, despite Serbian protests, "isn't an occupation". Several weeks later, when confronted by a journalist familiar with the Rambouillet text, Holbrooke claimed: "I never said that". This was a lie, it was also a tacit admission that the Rambouillet text did call for an occupation (why else would Holbrooke deny saying it when he had?) So the U.S. demanded that Yugoslavia submit to occupation or be bombed -- and Holbrooke lied about this crucial fact when questioned about the cause of the war.

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Kirsten Anderberg

During the Renaissance (the 14th -17th centuries), insanity possessed an air of divine intervention, of romanticism and wonder, such as that reflected in works such as Shakespeare's King Lear, Cervantes' Don Quixote, or the Fool card of the Tarot. Yet during this same period we also see the development of the "Ship of Fools." "Madmen" and "madwomen" were rounded up in towns throughout Europe during the Renaissance and sent to sea in these "Ships of Fools," to either be dumped overboard, or left on the streets of a foreign city. In the classical period (1750 - 1820), the "insane" were treated as though possessed by either demon or animal, reportedly due to moral weakness and/or idleness, and were rounded up, confined in institutions, and forced to work. The institution's owners and the industrialists split the profits from the insane population's labors. But "The Mad" would not work properly for "The Man." Church and State proclaimed idleness caused insanity at one point, and thought work to be insanity's cure. But they tried to force the "insane" to work and that became highly problematic. Thus people began to think that perhaps it was not idleness that made people "crazy," but rather "insanity" made people unable to work. This idleness, either way, was rubbing against industrialists' demands for society's "useless" segments (the insane, beggars, the homeless, abandoned children, the sick and elderly, etc.) to become their workforce, and thus the madman's idleness was deemed pride and rebellion, as an affront to God and the bourgeois order, and was even outlawed in many places over many centuries.

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Nasir Mahmood

The Indian Government referring to Mumbai carnage is acting like the Israeli tyrants, blaming for their own failure to Pakistan which is struggling with the same elements of terrorism and rogue groups.

What the people of India have to address and realize is the treatment of the Muslim communities in Gujrat and many areas, let alone their terrorism inflicted upon the innocent guard less Kashmiris. One would love to see the same people who are so easily driven by the sentiments endorsed through their Media tools to come out and protest against the Indian Government.

What about the Indian-Mossad relationship, credible evidence that the Mossad provides all kind of support to the Indian military, aid their intelligence development, exercising joint paramilitary programmes along the Siachin border with Pakistan. They are just caught in their own paradox of reality and disinformation.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The US government does not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but no other government can match the hypocrisy of the US government.

It is now well documented and known all over the world that the US government tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that the US government has had people kidnapped and “renditioned,” that is, transported to third world countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured.

Also documented and well known is the fact that the US Department of Justice provided written memos justifying the torture of detainees. One torture advocate who wrote the DOJ memos that gave the green light to the Bush regime’s use of torture is John Yoo, a South Korean immigrant who secured a US Justice Department appointment and a tenured professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. Members of Berkeley’s city council believe that Yoo should be charged with war crimes.

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Mary Louise

The CIA's secret activities, covert missions, and connections of control are all done under the pretense and protection of national security with no accountability whatsoever, at least in their minds. Considering the public is held accountable for everything we think, say, and do there is something seriously wrong with this picture. The CIA is the President's secret army, who have been and continue to be conveniently above the law with unlimited power and authority, to conduct a reign of terror around the globe.

The "old boy network" of socializing, talking shop, and tapping each other for favors outside the halls of government made it inevitable that the CIA and Corporate America would become allies, thus the systematic infiltration and takeover of the media.

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John-Loeffler / World Prout Assembly

Agents began rifling through all of the family's possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family's personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights. Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3^rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation's private food supply.

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Deanna Spingola

In Japan – “For a thousand years, it was the policy of emperors and shoguns to keep the people ignorant, and to keep taxes high enough so families had to struggle to survive, because this kept them fully occupied and harmless.”

J. P. Morgan was involved in Japan during the Meiji Restoration (1867-1912) which replaced the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate with the restored imperial family. This trade-off of power was merely a cosmetic change. Assets were confiscated from the Tokugawa shoguns and used to build factories and railroads. These assets were then privatized into four major zaibatsu (conglomerates): Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda and Iwasaki. A zaibatsu could be comprised of mines, factories, banks, ocean fleets, insurance companies and export agencies. These four zaibatsus retained their exclusivity through kinship, marriage, school associations, bribes or any other secret or social arrangement. This is very similar to America’s elite class.

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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari and Ahmadreza Tavassoli

The second anniversary of Anousheh Ansari's adventurous travel to the spatial station as the first Iranian space explorer passed over with the reticence of global media who have been busy analyzing the very earliest "side effects" of President-elect Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 US Presidential Elections.

In the heat of Ansari's space voyage, American media broached bunches of controversial issues such as the reluctance of half-blooded astronaut to introduce herself as Iranian or Muslim, but she never found the opportunity to clarify this.

Furthermore, most of the newspapers or websites dedicated their conversations to professional and technical matters when interviewing Anousheh Ansari which caused many stories to remain untold.

Following is the text of exclusive interview with the first female private space explorer Anousheh Ansari, the Iranian businesswomen who has perpetuated the name of Iran in the 2007 edition of Guinness World Records Book with her everlasting record.

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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari and Ahmadreza Tavassoli

The Cinema Verite International Documentary Film Festival, which was held in Iran on the third week of October 2008, was undoubtedly an occasional opportunity for documentary filmmakers from 75 countries worldwide to congregate for a landmark event and share their precious artistic experiences together and become acquainted with the obscured and disputatious culture of Iran.

The festival, which was inaugurated by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Islamic Republic of Iran, has hosted a stack of artists, journalists, filmmakers and analysts from US; which is not in an official friendly and impartial stance toward Iran these days, though is considered as a close cultural and scientific ally of Iran on behalf of its independent and non-governmental organizations and communities.

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