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Keeping the Green Movement Alive in Iran
Jalal Alavi
The Islamic Republic is in dire straits, and deservedly so.
Years of economic mismanagement (exacerbated by three rounds of UN-imposed sanctions), political repression, rampant corruption, and international adventurism seem to have taken their toll on the regime.
A good indication of the regime’s increasing vulnerability to external pressure was the inability of the hardliners to prevent, just a few days ago, massive opposition protests from taking place on the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities during the Ashura ceremonies.
The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning
James Petras
Introduction:
Asian capitalism, notably China and South Korea are competing with the US for global power. Asian global power is driven by dynamic economic growth, while the US pursues a strategy of military-driven empire building.
One Day’s Read of the Financial Times
Even a cursory read of a single issue of the Financial Times (December 28, 2009) illustrates the divergent strategies toward empire building. On page one, the lead article on the US is on its expanding military conflicts and its ‘war on terror’, entitled “Obama Demands Review of Terror List”. In contrast, there are two page-one articles on China, which describe China’s launching of the world’s fastest long-distance passenger train service and China’s decision to maintain its currency pegged to the US dollar as a mechanism to promote its robust export sector. While Obama turns the US focus on a fourth battle front (Yemen) in the ‘war on terror’ (after Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), the Financial Times reports on the same page that a South Korean consortium has won a $20.4 billion dollar contract to develop civilian nuclear power plants for the United Arab Emirates, beating its US and European competitors.
American Disappointment
Joel S. Hirschhorn
My anger has morphed into sadness, heartbreak actually. As the decade of zeros ends I see nothing but a tragic, historic and deadening American Disappointment, a terrible replacement for a once noble American Dream. The Great Recession was merely one symptom of the nation’s slide into slime, a quicksand created by the two-party plutocracy.
Free of delusion I have come to this sad reality: Once upon a time Americans could confidently believe that their nation was on the right track, getting better, offering most citizens a decent chance of living securely and proudly. Now, that view has been smashed by many years of undeniable evidence that our political system is frighteningly corrupt by forces that have ensured an economy serving the interests of the rich and powerful. Their pursuit of happiness enslaves ordinary Americans. America’s middle class is a disappearing and suffering set of distracted victims, slipping continually into the lower class of an inevitable two-class system. Most are oblivious to their fate, to the electoral tyranny that manipulates and consumes them as fuel to keep the corpocracy humming.
Demand that Obama End Bush's Policies and War Crimes
by Len Hart The Existentialist Cowboy
I did not support Obama so that the US could continue Bush's criminal policies! I most certainly did not and do not support the commission of new war crimes, aggression, or atrocities! When one's own country is wrong, it is one's patriotic duty to protest. I had hoped Obama would not become the new LBJ --stuck with and blamed for GOP wars of aggression accompanied by heinous war crimes by the US military and the world's largest and best financed terrorist organization --THE CIA!
Three of the seven--George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden--were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping. In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: "There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused."
Obama's New Year's resolutions (in my dreams)
Mary Shaw
This is the time of year when everyone is making their New Year's resolutions. As far as I can tell, the White House has not released President Obama's list of resolutions for 2010. So I offer the following resolutions for him to consider, unlikely as they are to be adopted:
• Amend our policy in Afghanistan to cut our losses and bring our troops home by the end of 2010. This is where a flip-flop would be easily forgiven. Our tax dollars have been wasted on propping up the corrupt Karzai government for long enough.
• Follow up on the Copenhagen climate change conference using all your strength and diplomatic skills, and lead the way to establish a more effective international policy to address the threat of climate change.
Egypt lacks the milk of human kindness
Stuart Littlewood
It is desperately sad to see the noble efforts of the Viva Palestina expedition turning sour in front of our eyes as the forces of darkness plot once again to derail humanitarian aid for Gaza.
Admittedly the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (joint organizers) are avoiding questions about whether or not they obtained clearance from Egypt for the route. This encourages speculation that convoy members were led up the garden path when they headed for Aqaba. The cost in time and expense (and lost pay, as many took time off work to make the trip) of having to re-trace their steps to Syrian, and divert to the port of Latakia, is an added burden they could have done without.
Joe Klein's Fatuous Fantasy
Time Magazine's Joe Klein is having an allergic reaction to free speech and public debate. The title of his latest column says it all: The Left's Idiocy on Health Reform. It's an ex cathedra pronouncement from a made man at one of the nation's oldest media properties.
What's got Joe so worked up?
Two things. He's upset at the lack of respect that internet based writers show for the mainstream media and Washington insiders. He's also beside himself that people are actually finding fault with the health care reform bill which many bloggers have the nerve to describe as just another government bailout for big business.
In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. Joe Klein, Dec. 30
That's some pretty nasty name calling isn't it. "Hey villager!" Accusing an entire class of people of idiocy pales by comparison. If I've ever read the term villager, I didn't pay enough attention to remember it. But let's take Joe's word that it's out there in all its rhetorical glory. According to Klein, leftist bloggers see villagers as "regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village." Now there's some idiocy – from Joe's keyboard to our screens.
What is for the ICDDR,B ?
Mahmood Ali
In Bangladesh there are plenty of organizations which are receiving foreign funds under the pretext of helping the poor of Bangladesh. The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), is such a big one. It is essential to examine their works and demystify their role. Mahmood Ali attempts an exposure of the specific case with documetary arguments. He insists that the ICDDR,B spends money, collected in the name of poor, for purposes which have little to do with the diarrhoeal problem of the people of Bangladesh. We encourage our readers to write more on similar cases.
‘Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down” a New Academic Research Says
Gilad Atzmon
One-quarter of Europeans believe that “Jews have too much influence“
31% agree that “Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind.”
45.7% of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”
About 37.4% agree with the following statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”
According to new research conducted by Bielefeld University hatred towards Muslims decreased over the past year while hatred of Jews is growing. Israelis must be concerned. The sudden drop in European Islamophobia doesn’t fit into the Zionist global plan in which Muslims are cornered and ostracised as reactionaries while Israel is dropping bombs in the name of democracy and liberalism. According to the leading Israeli paper Ynet, “the level of resentment against most minorities declined – sexism considerably, Islamophobia slightly. There were only two exceptions: homophobia and anti-Semitism.”(1)
The war has never ended!!
Najwa Sheikh Ahmed
A year has passed since the Israeli war on the besieged Gaza, a war that left more than one thousand innocent children, women and elderly people killed, a tremendous destruction of houses, universities, hospitals, schools, and infrastructure.
This malicious act of killing and destruction reached every thing and every where in Gaza, where complete families have been killed without any mercy of the screams of their children or women, without any regret. Complete districts have been flattened to the ground; agricultural lands have been bulldozed not for any reason but to keep more pain and bitterness inside the people of Gaza.
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