The great Gil Scott-Heron is no more. He was a poet, revolutionary and a fighter. He fought against apartheid in South Africa and he fought against Apartheid in occupied Palestine. He was also a prophet who foresaw in 1968 something which rings just as true today. Rest in peace brother.
P.s. Don’t know if this is any good but here is a lengthy profile from the August 2010 issue of the New Yorker.
I had missed this. Menobia Bouazizi, the mother of Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old martyr whose death triggered the Arab revolt, sent the following message to Libya’s freedom fighters.
The family of Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian from Sidi Bouzid whose act of self-immolation triggered the Tunisian Uprising, has a message for the families in Libya who have lost their loved ones to the violent repression of the protests.
Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor, set himself on fire on December 17 after police abused and humiliated him. He died of his burns on January 4.
The protest movement that began in Sidi Bouzid swelled to become a nationwide phenomenon, and spread to other countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, it reached Libya.
PBS Frontline has just aired a documentary “WikiSecrets” — I’ve seen the first few minutes, and already it comes across as a hatchet job. In the interest of transparency, Wikileaks has released the full video of Martin Smith’s interview with Julian Assange because it predicted that the film would distort reality. This is a very interesting interview, so don’t miss.
On 24 May, 2011, 9pm EST, PBS-Frontline will air a documentary “WikiSecrets”. WikiLeaks has had intelligence for some time that the program is hostile and misrepresents WikiLeaks’ views and tries to build an “espionage” case against its founder, Julian Assange, and also the young soldier, Bradley Manning.
In accordance with our tradition of “scientific journalism” (full primary sources) we release here our, behind the scenes, interview tape between Julian Assange & PBS Frontline’s Martin Smith which was recorded on 4/4/2011. In the tape, Assange scolds Martin Smith for his previous coverage of Bradley Manning and addresses a number of issues surrounding the 1917 Espionage Act investigation into WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning.
The Frontline documentary will include footage of a number of individuals who have a collective, and very dirty personal vendetta, against the organization. These include David Leigh, Adrian Lamo, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Eric Schmitt and Kim Zetter. While the program filmed other sources, such as Vaughan Smith who provided a counter-narrative, these more credible voices have been excluded from the program presented to the US public.
Anatol Lieven discusses Pakistan’s surprising degree of stability; International governance challenges; the role of the army and ISI; the drug trade; and Pakistan’s relationship with the U.S., Afghanistan, and other countries, including India, China, and Russia.
Anatol Lieven is chair of International Relations and Terrorism Studies at King’s College London, and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His next book, “Pakistan: A Hard Country,” will appear in April 2011.
Continue reading “Pakistan- A Hard Challenge for International Governance”
I was born in Chitral so I’ve travelled over this pass several times (part of my family still does). It is ironic to see the truck decorated with pictures of Benazir Bhutto since it was her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who had first promised to build a tunnel and a safer road to connect Dir and Chitral. But that was over four decades back–and the promise never materialized. (Benazir also made a similar promise but proved no more eager than her father to deliver). I am shocked to see that things have actually gotten worse since my last trip.
Anatol Lieven is the author of the excellent America Right or Wrong. In the following interview he discusses his new book Paksitan: A Hard Country, which I shall review here shortly.
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Anatol Lieven for a discussion of his new book Pakistan: A Hard Country. Lieven emphasizes the important role of kinship in understanding society and the state in Pakistan. Discussing the military’s unique position as the preeminent national institution, he explains the sources of its power and prestige. Focusing on Pakistani national security thinking, he traces the perceived strategic threat posed by India, the role of Afghanistan in Pakistani strategy, the distinction between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, and the importance of Kashmir. He then proceeds to an analysis of the complex relationship between the United States and Pakistan. Lieven concludes with a discussion of the threat posed by Pakistan’s geographical location in the Indus valley and the long term implications of climate change for its future.
Tony Judt’s Ill Fares The Land: A Treatise On Our Present Discontents is an elegantly crafted elegy for the postwar consensus and a concise and erudite statement by a towering public intellectual of political wisdom accumulated over a lifetime of achivement. Its intended audience is ‘youths on both sides of Atlantic,’ who are too leery of civic engagement because of their disillusionment with politics and suspicion of government. Judt aims to invigorate their interest with challenging ideas and a practical project for political transformation. He offers no utopia, but an alternative that is ‘better than anything else to hand.’ He makes a case for social democracy, a form of government that can play an enhanced role without threatening liberties.
Judt begins with a diagnosis of the present malaise, a condition JK Galbraith described as ‘private wealth and public squalor.’ Judt finds something ‘profoundly wrong’ with an age which has made ‘a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest.’ Like Oscar Wilde’s cynics, he laments, ‘we know what things cost but have no idea of what they are worth.’ With ‘growth’ as the only index of progress, politicians have been able to claim success even as inequality has reached grotesque proportions. The decline began with Reagan and Thatcher’s assault on the welfare state, but has proceeded apace both in Britain and the US under successive Democratic and Labour governments. The result is a society marked by extreme inequality and broken communities. Judt draws on the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level, to show a correlation between the extreme inequality of the American and British society and its adverse consequences on health, crime, and social mobility.
Much of the TV, video, film and sport we watch is sponsored by a brand, a product, a corporation. But … why? With humor and persistence, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock dives into the hidden but influential world of brand marketing, on his quest to make a completely sponsored film about sponsorship. And yes, this talk was sponsored too. By whom and for how much? He’ll tell you.
Nato is now engaged in open terrorism. Having failed in its ostensible mission to protect the civilians of Ben Ghazi and Misurata, it is now raining bombs on civilians in Tripoli, including a disabled childrens’ school, in a manner not dissimilar to Gaddafi’s. In a clear breach of the UN mandate, it has also tried to assassinate Gaddafi, instead killing his son and grandchildren.
Meanwhile, according to sources on the ground, Misurata’s Qasr Ahmed neighbourhood remains under intense assault from Gaddafi’s Grad rockets.
Arnold Weinstein is one of the greatest teachers of literature, and I owe my own rediscovery of the pleasures of reading in good part to him. He always brings riveting insights to familiar works, but without the tedious blather of theory. Enjoy this fascinating discussion with Weinstein from Brown University’s excellent Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
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