Perceptive comments by Bernard Avishai on American Jews (or Jews anywhere, really) who can’t/won’t tolerate criticism of Israel: American Jews who proclaimed their friendship to Israel most noisily could not readily imagine… what… it might be like to live there. So the ways democratic norms fostered tolerance for religious dissent, or contributed to resolving tensions between Arabs…
Showing all posts tagged United States
The lying liar behind Iraq war says he lied
No kidding: A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow. “Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles…
Big Brother isn’t in the future, it’s here today
Via the New York Times: Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show. The practice has become big business…
Talking Israeli apartheid on The Colbert Report
There are so many problems with this interview – Peter Beinart talking about “democratic” Israel, as if the occupation isn’t fundamentally created and supported in Israel proper – but at least such issues are on mainstream US TV: The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
Why Pakistan and America will never see eye to eye
One of the strongest impressions of my recent visit to Pakistan – meeting journalists, dissidents, writers and intelligence people – was the profound disconnect between Pakistan and the West. The country has suffered due to a range of factors since 9/11 – corrupt government, American bombardment, unaccountable intelligence services, drone attacks, countless murders and economic…
Challenging MSM approved imperial enforcers
Here’s a book review I wrote a while ago published here exclusively: The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work Belen Fernandez Verso, $22.95 Michael Ignatieff: The Lesser Evil? Derrick O’Keefe Verso, $22.95 Antony Loewenstein Back in May 2003, two months after the start of the American-led war in Iraq, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman…
North Korean horrors make us realise true meaning of depravity
Sometimes I read something that puts the notion of human rights into perspective. This story about a man who escaped from a North Korean gulag is shocking beyond belief. It sounds like hell on earth: His first memory is an execution. He walked with his mother to a wheat field, where guards had rounded up…
Nothing is private in the 21st century
Our digital world is increasingly monitored by a range of state and non-state actors. Be afraid and be aware. A recent cover story in Wired showed how the US government, with no transparency, is building a massive listening station where everybody is targeted: Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data…
What happened that night in Kandahar when US solider committed massacre?
Australian TV SBS Dateline travelled to the site and investigated: