Will the dishonest mainstream media on torture please stand up?

The reluctance of the American corporate media to call US torture “torture” has been exposed in a recent Harvard study. When “they” do it – Iraqis, Afghans, Colombians etc – it’s called torture. But when “we” do it, well, time to find another, less painful word. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald will have none of it and…

Fayyadism is a dead-end road

While Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas reportedly offers parts of Palestine to the Jewish state – an unelected man with no legitimate credentials, just how Washington and Tel Aviv likes it – nobody serious (except some gullible New York Times commentators) actually believes the Palestinian Authority has any real power to bring change: Since June 2007…

Making Palestinians central to journalism is still a while off

The lack of representative Palestinian journalists in the corporate press is addressed by one of the best in the business: Taghreed El-Khodary, formerly the New York Times correspondent in Gaza, spoke recently at an event organized by the Palestine Center (6/23/10). She shared some interesting observations–the first being that her revelation that she left Gaza…

Killing civilians in a kind and considerate way

Despite New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman being always happy to defend Western terrorism in the name of freedom and democracy, don’t get on the wrong side of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Friedman certainly is entitled to his view. But he is not entitled to slander Israel, and last Sunday he did so with relish. In…

The paper of record waking up to Israeli colonies?

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times today: The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable and costly to the country’s image. But one more blunt truth must be acknowledged: the occupation is morally repugnant. On one side of a barbed-wire fence here in the southern Hebron hills is the…

West Bank poverty “worse than Gaza”, says UK charity

Despite what the New York Times tells its readers about the wonders of life in the West Bank, the facts just keep on getting in the way: Children living in the poorest parts of the West Bank face significantly worse conditions than their counterparts in Gaza, a study conducted by an international youth charity has…

A hug and cuddle with Tzipi Livni

This is how the New York Times interviews Israel’s “opposition” leader Tzipi Livni. Soft-ball questions, nothing about the occupation or the real human rights crisis in Gaza or fundamentalist Jewish settlers. Of course not, she’s one of us, remember? The Israeli security cabinet just voted to ease the three-year blockade on Gaza, in the wake…

Those who love some commerce after a US occupation

A grimly fascinating tale in the New York Times about an enterprising Lebanese man who has opened a flash restaurant in Baghdad: Mr. Hage, 51, is the most updated version of an old Lebanese story, that of a diaspora known for its willingness to follow commerce where it leads. Simply put, for a decade, he…

How Obama betrayed the rights of a tortured man

A New York Times editorial of necessary clarity: The Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the claims of Maher Arar, an innocent Canadian who was sent to Syria to be tortured in 2002, was a bitterly disappointing abdication of its duty to hold officials accountable for illegal acts. The Bush administration sent Mr. Arar to outsourced…

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