Showing all posts in June 2019

China’s insatiable appetite for natural resources is taking the growing superpower to predictable places in Africa. For example, Sudan and China are increasingly close on military issues. Such behaviour is familiar to Western governments, fond of arming and supporting dictatorships throughout the continent. Black Looks blog, a Nigerian living in Spain, explains: “I see no…

John Bunzl, Haaretz, February 10: “It was the late Edward Said who thought differently. He argued convincingly that recognizing the Holocaust for what it was (a genocide of the Jewish people) would increase the moral validity and legitimacy to demand recognition of the (very different) Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe of 1948), and that such recognition would…

Iranian Jews deserve support for their courageous stand: “Iran’s Jews have sharply criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust, saying his remarks have sparked fears in their ancient but dwindling community. “Haroun Yashayaei, the head of Iran’s Jewish community, sent a letter of complaint to Ahmadinejad two weeks ago. “‘How is it possible to…

Saree Makdisi, Counterpunch, February 10: “…There can be no doubt that the Hamas charter is not only xenophobic, sectarian, and racist, but also ill-conceived, inaccurate, retrograde, and intellectually vacuous. Nevertheless, the obsessive attention being paid to this document in the US in recent weeks forces one to ask not merely what purposes such an obsession…

Conservative US commentator Andrew Sullivan publishes some “liberal” thoughts on the Danish cartoon controversy. Take this example: “I’m honestly starting to suspect that, before this is over, European nations are going to have exactly four choices in dealing with their entire Moslem populations – for elementary safety’s sake”: (1) “Capitulate totally to them and become…

Italian footballer Paolo Di Canio – “a fascist but not a racist” – has been given some appropriate punishment: “Paolo Di Canio, the Lazio forward who has become the darling of the neo-fascist right with his repeated straight-arm salutes, has been summoned by the mayor of Rome to listen to fellow Italians who survived the…

Leonard Fein, The Forward, February 10: “Here’s a puzzle, a small piece of a much larger set of nagging issues that bubbles just beneath the surface of our ordinary lives: On December 23, 2005, Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor of The New Republic, asserted in The Wall Street Journal that ‘Israeli officials were lukewarm about…

After a group of British academics decided to boycott Israel in 2005 (though later overturned), the inevitable second stage is upon us: “A group including some of Britain’s most prominent architects is considering calling for an economic boycott of Israel’s construction industry in protest at the building of Israeli settlements and the separation barrier in…

Brokeback to the future.