Gareth Porter, one of PULSE’s 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009, discusses Afghanistan.
TheRealNews — 20 June 2010 — McChrystal confronts the specter of a collapse of United States political support for the war
Author: alannahpriestley
Football on the wall in Bethlehem
AlJazeeraEnglish — June 19, 2010 — Israel’s separation apartheid wall, twice the height of the former Berlin Wall and more than 750km-long, is a much hated barrier in the Palestinian West Bank.
Now, a restaurant owner in the occupied Palestinian West Bank has come up with unique way to please World Cup fans: he has been showing every match of the tournament on a section of the wall, transforming it into a giant screen.
An Evening with Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong is the author of the classic The History of God.
UCtelevision — 17 June 2010 — One of the world’s leading commentators on religious affairs, Karen Armstrong discusses the intersection of religion and secularism in contemporary life. She explores the ideas that Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common and their effect on world events. Series: Walter H. Capps Center Series
Lebanese aid flotilla “Virgin Mary” sets sail for Gaza
Turkey’s regional popularity soars
AlJazeeraEnglish — 18 June 2010 — Turkey’s popularity in the Middle East has soared following its denunciation of Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last month. Turkish flags and posters of Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, have been prominent in demonstrations around the world protesting the Israeli attack. In the Gaza Strip, a growing number of newborn babies have been named after Erdogan. Meanwhile Turkey says it will not send its ambassador back to Israel unless it receives a formal apology for the attack, that left nine people, mostly Turks, dead.
Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin reports on Turkey’s rising popularity in the region.
Unrest in Pakistan
Moving Beyond the U.S. National Interest
by Josh Brollier and Kathy Kelly
June 18, 2010
“The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.”
Dr. Hassan says that sporadic outbursts of anger in Pakistan won’t coalesce into a people’s revolution anytime soon. The demonstrators are too disorganized. But, the sheer volume of daily protests shows that many sectors of Pakistani society have pressing needs and priorities that do not include enlistment as foot soldiers in a proxy force for the United States’ War on Terror.
Dr. Hassan, a co-founder of the People’s Party of Pakistan, is a respected scholar and statesman. Last year, when we met with him, he had just returned from a visit, in the U.S., with Professors Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, his contemporaries in seeking to build just and fair social structures. Last month, in Lahore, he spoke with us about U.S. interference in the region and changing dynamics in Pakistan.
Nuclear Iran – Is There An Option?
Not for the US but plenty for Iran, says Mosaic Intelligence Report. It says sanctions are futile and the United States only harms its own interests.
linktv — 17 June 2010 — (Mosaic Intelligence Report: June 17, 2010) The US imposes more sanctions on Iran. Iranian President Ahmedinejad remains defiant. Are sanctions enough to stop Iran’s nuclear program? And who will pay the price?
Vamos Argentina!
by Kurt Fernández
BUENOS AIRES — While some nations are known to take advantage of global distraction by the World Cup in order to perpetrate human rights violations, Argentina is pressing ahead in its efforts to prosecute crimes against humanity committed during the Guerra Sucia.
In the first of eight major human rights trials currently getting underway, a three-judge panel in Buenos Aires took up a case on June 3 in which six former military and intelligence officials from the 1976-83 dictatorship are charged with the illegal kidnap, torture, and murder of suspected political opponents from Uruguay, Chile, and Cuba.
The victims were among the 30,000 or so opponents of the Argentine regime who were disappeared during the Dirty War.
The case is “Automotores Orletti,” named for the Buenos Aires auto repair shop the dictatorship used as a ghastly clandestine “detention center.” One of many such facilities across the country, its kidnap victims were tortured with repair shop machinery and tools.
A Zionist State of Mind, A Dreamscape Of Ghosts: One Jew’s Hard Awakening
by Phil Rockstroh
Although my mother fled Nazi Germany, as a child, on a Kindertransport, with a few family valuables sewn into her clothing, and I was brought up on the myths and hagiography of the Zionist state, I, over time, came to recognize the folly of the whole colonialist enterprise — the folly of ethnic exclusion and expulsion, the inherent tragedy of nationalism based on the delusion of religious birthright. With much sorrow, I came to the sad realization that the dream of the State of Israel was based on European chauvinism and exceptionalism. This reckoning has been a difficult one for me to bear — the hardest awakening of my adult life.
My father was born on a Reservation in the American mid-west. His people, like the Palestinians, resisted invaders of European ancestry and were crushed. At present, both peoples remain exiled and caged in their native land.
The Jewish side of myself understands the historical traumas that gave rise to the yearning for a tribal Homeland. Atavistically, I suffer the Jewish state’s collective night terrors and reel in its daylight rationalizations for its brutalities. But the Native American in me knows the rage of those crushed by the heartless force of an invading people.
Continue reading “A Zionist State of Mind, A Dreamscape Of Ghosts: One Jew’s Hard Awakening”
A Voyage of Life and Death
Al Jazeera reconstructs the events surrounding the Israeli assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
AlJazeeraEnglish — 14 June 2010 — In the early hours of Monday, May 31, the Israeli navy intercepted a flotilla of boats carrying thousands of tonnes of aid to Gaza. Nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara – the flotilla’s largest boat – were killed. This much we know. In the aftermath of the event, accounts from both sides have diverged wildly. Israel claims that it acted in self-defence against a group of “violent extremists” linked to al-Qaeda and Hamas, intent on breaching the military blockade of Gaza. The activists say they were frightened for their lives after being shot at from helicopters in the dark of night, their raised white flag ignored. They say Israel’s attack on their ship in international waters was unexpected and disproportionate. Examining claim and counter claim, A Vourney of Life and Death includes an exclusive interview with the captain of the Mavi Marmara, those on board the ships and previously unseen footage.
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