“You know if I had nickel for every time Bush has mentioned 9/11, I could raise enough reward money to go after Bin Laden.” – Jon Stewart 24 other priceless quotes of the year.
Showing all posts in June 2019
No more us and them
A timely series of essays on the West, Islam and Islamophobia that highlights the problems within Islam itself, the Western war against the religion, integration and assimilation and media mis-representation. Western and Islamic writers tackle the key issues of the day with poise.
Democracy for all
Sometimes, even the New York Times talks sense: “The messy thing about democracy is that people tend to vote for the candidates they want – a point that seemed lost on Israel yesterday when it threatened to ban Palestinians in East Jerusalem from voting in the scheduled Palestinian elections if Hamas took part.” Hamas and…
A high price to pay
My final New Matilda column for the year is about the Israel/Palestine conflict and what may lie ahead: “The greater ramification of Israeli intransigence is a growing belief among Palestinians in a one-State solution. While a two-State answer is still widely accepted in both the Israeli and Palestinian communities – even though the details of…
Thinking like we do
Medialens, “correcting for the distorted view of the corporate media”, is about to release its first book, Guardians of Power. Check out this exclusive interview with the authors: “If you are to convince people in our society that they are free, you can’t just censor everything as they did in the Soviet Union, because then…
Israel and Saddam
Did Israel lead the US into the war on Iraq? The US-based Jewish Voice for Peace examines this rarely discussed issue. Israel’s security is clearly a major factor in this debate. Many leading Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish, believe that the interests of Israel and America coincide. The Jewish state is not the leading factor in…
Love and hate in Poland
What do Poles think of the world more than 15 years after the fall of Communism? A new poll provides some insights: “According to a new survey, Poles most like Italians, the English and the Spanish, while prejudices remain about Arabs and Roma people. And Americans, too, are slipping down the list. “A year and…
Behind the tapestry
The ABC still screens the occasional program of note, unafraid to tackle the issues of the day: “ABC Television will launch a reality program next year – and has pegged its relevance to Sydney’s recent race riots. “Family Footsteps will be a four-part television series taking second and third generation Australians back to their ancestral…
Saying “no” and “yes” to Georgie
Recent revelations of the Bush administration illegally monitoring US citizens without a warrant mask another sinister element of this sordid tale. The New York Times agreed to hold the story for an entire year and only published the revelations after discussions with senior government officials. The key section: “The White House asked the New York…
Fragmenting begins
So much for a Western-friendly, secular, open-minded, “liberated” Iraq: “Iraq is disintegrating. The first results from the parliamentary election last week show the country is dividing between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions. “Religious fundamentalists now have the upper hand. The secular and nationalist candidate backed by the US and Britain was humiliatingly defeated. “The Shia…