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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.
John F. Kennedy’s Definition of “Liberal”, JFK’s Acceptance Speech of the New York Liberal Party Nomination
liberalparty.org
“…if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." - September 14, 1960
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
PsyOp Internet battle for Hearts, and Minds
Sancho Jones
The Internet revolution has changed the face of our planet. Over the last 20 years there's been a complete transformation of the way we live, conduct business, and share information. In the same amount of time, information technology has helped bring countless atrocities committed by governments, and global corporations into view. We've seen the rise of groups like "We Are Change", and birthing of the" Truth Movement"; which has kicked off a viral, and grassroots information wave. The Internet's been in many regards a saving grace of mankind, and in the same likeness the greatest threat to the establishment!
Recently, we had the Global Warming talks in Copenhagen; they were a failure! What else could come from the exposure of emails showing fudged data on Global Warming? Nothing is what. Climate Gate[1] changed what would have been global "Cap, & Trade" agreements, and other carbon tax legislation from an assured victory at Copenhagen, to an embarrassment. Al Gore decided it'd be better not to show up at all, after having to run from angry mobs, and being pelted by snowballs due to the leaks. The only thing that came of the conference, was a poor attempt at "saving face" through a non binding resolution.
Meditations on an inscrutable nation
By Gaither Stewart
Mexico City's main square, the Zócalo, was at one time the heart of the
Aztec empire's own capital, Tenochtitlán. A huge Mexican flag presides
over the plaza’s many activities, including political rallies.
I.
THE FIFTEEN MONTHS I SPENT IN MEXICO deepened and consolidated a fundamental transformation long underway in me. The Italian writer Ignazio Silone was right: I had to step backwards from what I once was and where I was before in order to see myself and the world. Or maybe it was simply the altitude of Mesoamerica … and the winds … and also new inclinations toward unrestraint. Or maybe what happened to me in Mexico was simply because it is not necessary to live south of the border very long in order to begin to see American imperialism at work, contributing to the existing economic disparity between north and south. It is a mystery why things are the way they are. Still, it became clear that powerful evil forces combine to compel millions of Mexicans to sneak into the United States and live a dog’s life just to eat. Though it is true that because of the missing social idea America’s poor are poorer than Europe’s poor, Mexico’s poor are still worse off. Their poverty makes them seem to grovel for sustenance. Most certainly Mexicans don’t work on the skyscrapers of Dallas and New York City and wash dishes in cafeterias in Atlanta and in Charlotte and pick fruit in California because they are enamored with Yankee life. They prefer Mexico. They are north of the formidable Rio Grande border with its growing wall for the simple reason that though man does not live by bread alone, he must eat. For anyone with eyes to see it is clear that something is startlingly and tragically out of whack in North America.
Happy New Year Palestine, Happy new year humanity!
Salim Nazzal
When Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine great poet was asked in one of the most difficult period in Palestine history, what Palestinians can do now, his immediate answer was to grow up hope. For more than 70 years, Palestinians move from war to war, from occupation to occupation, from exile to exile, from siege to siege yet they continue to hope. Hope and resistance are interacted, one resists because one hopes, and because one hopes one resists.
I asked a Palestinian who lost almost all his family by Israeli air raid how he manages life alone, he said hope. I asked Palestinian lost his arms due to Israeli raids and insisted to go one in life, I won’t let Israel murder our hopes, he said.
Hope jumps even in the most difficult times to whisper to the oppressed to stand firm. During the occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, I saw a proud young Palestinian woman walking opposite Israeli soldiers bearing in her neck a cross and the Palestinian map, she told me she wants to convey a message of challenge and hope, the crusification of Palestine is a temporary thing, and Palestine will rise again.
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