Category: Uncategorized

Obama won’t end the drone war, but Pakistan might

My latest article for Al Jazeera:

The CIA and the Pentagon have dwarfed the State Department in both resources and influence…

The CIA is likely to resist any shift in policy that mandates relinquishing such power. But unless the conflict between the CIA’s institutional imperatives and US national interest is resolved, blood will continue to spill and the world will grow more dangerous.

This unresolved tension is also manifest in the ambivalence of presidential rhetoric. Last month, Obamalaid out his new national security strategy in a magnificent soliloquy. But in aiming for Hamlet, Obama delivered Gollum.

You can read the rest at Al Jazeera.

What did the G8 do for tax justice?

taxcastlogoIn the Taxcast, the Tax Justice Network’s June 2013 podcast: ‘Coulds’ and ‘shoulds’ – but any real action? We analyse what the G8 summit did for tax justice, why some tax havens may get a competitive advantage and what happens now. And, while the world waits for reform, the Taxcast looks at how some countries are finding creative ways around the current global tax system. Produced by @Naomi_Fowler for the Tax Justice Network. Featuring John Christensen, Richard Murphy, Lee Sheppard, Zitto Zuberi Kabwe, Jim Henry

For more Taxcasts go to http://www.tackletaxhavens.com/taxcast or find the Taxcast on iTunes

Al Khatib: victory for Syrian revolution will break chain of oppression for all Arabs

A very fine speech at the Arab League summit by Syrian opposition leader Moaz al Khatib, which ends with a call to all the gathered Arabs to release their detainees and end oppression and injustice. (English subtitles included)

In the Name of God the Most Merciful…

God’s peace and blessings be upon you all. This blessing comes from a people one quarter of whose population are now homeless, one hundred thousand are imprisoned. They have paid a heavy price for the freedom they seek, with over 100,000 martyrs and a destroyed infrastructure, at the hands of a savage oppressor.Peace and blessings upon you, from a people who are being slaughtered under the watchful eye of the world for two years, and have been bombarded with a variety of heavy weapons and ballistic missiles, while many governments continue to shake their heads and wonder what they should do.

Peace and blessings upon you, from the only people in the world where warplanes bomb bakeries, and the dough is blended with the blood of children and women.

Peace and blessings upon you, from the widows and orphans, the tortured, the wounded and the disabled, the prisoners and the detainees, the refugees and displaced, the rebels and the fighters, and the martyrs that flutter around this wretched world.

Peace and blessings upon you, from a people who will follow the path to freedom, and who posses a will that can destabilize the greatest idol, and a love that fills the world with tranquility, warmth and compassion.

Continue reading “Al Khatib: victory for Syrian revolution will break chain of oppression for all Arabs”

Tennessee, Papa, and the evolving idea of Manhood

Christopher Lydon is the worthiest personality to have graced American radio. His skills as a host are admired by every listener to Radio Open Source. But you’ll have to hear the following conversation to appreciate how even as a guest he has few equals. Our friendship was formed over our shared devotion for ideas of the late Tony Judt. But I’m happy to discover that we also have in common a deep love for Hemingway’s prose. Here is Chris discussing Hemingway and Tennessee Williams on Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Egan. Don’t miss it because radio does not get any better than this

The Silence and the Roar

sireesA version of this review was published at the Independent.

“The Silence and the Roar” by Syrian novelist and screenwriter Nihad Sirees was written in 2004, long before the roar of revolutionary crowds, and the countervailing roar of gunfire and warplanes, filled Syrian skies.

The pre-revolutionary roar of the title is that of the (capitalised) Leader speaking, and of the crowd celebrating the Leader speaking, and of those being beaten because they aren’t celebrating loudly enough; a roar relentlessly repeated by radios and televisions throughout the city, accompanying the protagonist almost everywhere he goes.

Counterposed to the roar there are two forms of silence: of imprisonment and of the grave. The first holds an ironic allure, for “the most beautiful thing in the entire universe is the silence that allows us to hear soft and distant sounds.”

The narrator is Fathi Sheen, a writer fallen out of favour with the regime, silenced only to the extent that he doesn’t write any more. He’s very pleasant company, amusing and straightforward, his digressions into Aristotle and Hannah Arendt notwithstanding. Over the course of a day Fathi struggles against the flow of celebrant crowds and regime thugs to visit first his mother and then his lover. He’s been content thus far to continue not to write in return for being left alone, but it becomes clear as the hours pass that the Leader’s friends plan to drive a different sort of bargain. The novella is in part a parable of the artist surviving under dictatorship. How does he make space for creation between silent and roaring states of mind? How does he avoid the regime’s Faustian temptations? More generally, how should one resist?

One answer for Fathi and his lover Lama, as for Winston Smith and his Julia, is through sex, which they find to be “a form of speech, indeed, a form of shouting in the face of the silence.”

Continue reading “The Silence and the Roar”

Acrohym

John Butler pays tribute to the military industry’s genius for dramatically compressing Orwellian concepts into memorable acronyms.

A song in praise of DARPA, the most exciting arts commissioning agency in the world today.

Seize the Time: The Eighth Defendant

Black Panther founder Bobby Seale is raising money for a biographical film which will tell the story of his life, the Panthers, and the wider anti-racism struggle in America in the 60s and 70s. It sounds like a very worthwhile project. Full details, and how to donate, can be found here.

Thomas Friedman, all-American pundit

The following is an excerpt from a review by Central Michigan University professor John Robertson, for War in Context, of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work.

With the publication of Belen Fernandez’s The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, Verso Press inaugurated a new series, called Counterblasts, with the intention of reviving a tradition of polemic that it traces back to the fiery political pamphleteers of the 17th century. Obviously, then, Ms. Fernandez was not supposed to produce an impartial, dispassionate analysis of the collected works of the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning chief foreign affairs correspondent. Rather, she has come up with something that the American public in general (and students of US foreign affairs and public diplomacy especially) undoubtedly need more: a systematic, detailed take-down of the neo-liberal bias, myopic US-Israeli chauvinism, and general intellectual shallowness that almost scream to be noticed in Friedman’s writing. Yet, lamentably, Friedman has been enshrined as a sort of American “Everyman’s” go-to guy for understanding what’s happening in the world, what needs fixing, and how “we” can and should do it.

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What role does the pro-Israel lobby play?

What role do pro-Israel lobby groups, and AIPAC in particular, play in the US election and why are they courted by those competing to be the next US president? Guests: Professor John Mearsheimer; Larry Greenfield; Hillary Mann Leverett.

Fadwa Sulaiman

Samar Yazbeck, Ibrahim Qashoush, Khaled Khalifa, Rasha Omran, Ali Farzat, Mai Skaf, Samih Shqair – there’s an impressive list of Syrian writers, musicians, songwriters, and artists who have bravely and unambiguously supported the people’s aspirations for dignity. And now the actress Fadwa Sulaiman. Here she is in besieged Homs leading chants of ‘no Salafis, no Brotherhood, the Syrians want freedom’ and ‘One, One, the Syrian People are One.’ Here she is on Jazeera (Arabic) interviewed via skype. And, below, here she is announcing her hunger strike until the prisoners are released and the siege of the besieged cities is lifted. Translation of her words follows after the page break.

Continue reading “Fadwa Sulaiman”