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Gideon Levy
This is the story of another boy, the seventh in the past few months who was killed for no good reason, this time in the Qalandiyah refugee camp near Ramallah. It’s the story of another Palestinian who was shot with appalling thoughtlessness by Israeli soldiers, just as Gil Na’amati, a kibbutz member, was shot last Friday by Israeli soldiers while demonstrating against the separation fence - only in the case of the boy there was no public furore in Israel. It’s also the story of an American dream, between Qalandiyah and Jelazoun, which was almost realized but finally was brutally shattered.
Nizam Khan
At the January 2002 State of the Union address, George Bush stated, “America and Afghanistan are now allies against terror. We’ll be partners in rebuilding that country.” He reiterated on October 11th 2002, at an event highlighting US humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, “we want to be a continuing part of the new era of hope in Afghanistan. We are helping the people to now recover from years of tyranny and oppression. We’re helping Afghanistan to claim its democratic future, and we’re helping that nation to establish public order and safety.” More than two years on, where is the help? Where is the reconstruction? Where is the hope?
David R Hoffman
The coup by George W. Bush in the year 2000, coupled with the invasion of Iraq, revealed how easily those in the USA can be manipulated, how willing they are to be lied to, and how vacuous the freedoms of speech and press have become in that country. But, perhaps most disturbingly, these events demonstrated that even though the words “freedom, democracy and human rights” are chanted like mantras by political leaders, many in the USA have apparently welcomed, or at the very least are blissfully unconcerned about, the erosion of freedom, the abuse of human rights, and their nation’s growing transformation from a democracy into a neo-fascist dictatorship.
Robert Fisk
Ever since Daniel Pipes - he of the failed American neo-cons - piped up last summer with his plan to install a “democratic-minded autocrat” (sic) in Iraq, I have been eyeing the Washington crystal ball for further signs of what the designers of this wretched war have in store for the Iraqis whom they “liberated” for “democracy” last year. And bingo, not long before Christmas, another of those chilling proposals for “New Iraq” popped up from the same right-wing cabal. Any predictions for Iraq this year may thus have to be based on the thoughts of Leslie Gelb, a former chairman of the United States Council on Foreign Relations, whose wretched plans for “liberated” Iraq call for something close to ethnic cleansing.
Ilan Pappe
The Palestinians have been told by the Israeli left-wing that the Geneva Accords are their last chance. The current offer is the best and most generous Israelis have ever made them. The Palestinians, so the argument goes, had better accept the Accords, or suffer the consequences of yet more governments like that of Ariel Sharon. But, as this excellent article shows, Palestinians with any kind of memory at all will have heard the same arguments before, and bereft as the Accords are of any justice for the millions made homeless by previous ethnic cleansing, they would only be used by the Israeli right-wing to further entrench Zionist domination over all of historical Palestine.
Dahr Jamail for the World Crisis Web
Today I went to the Iraqi Air Defense Ministry. Or more precisely, what?s left of it. For what used to be a proud complex of buildings in central Baghdad which housed generals and airmen from the Iraqi Air Force, is no longer. Bombed during the Anglo-American Invasion, many of the buildings have been reduced to large heaps of broken concrete and metal. Today the Air Defense Ministry serves as a makeshift refuge for people and families with little or no income. Children with dirt smeared into their faces and arms run about the area near two swimming pools, which now are filled with one meter of dark brown scum, littered with garbage floating lifelessly above.
Faiza Rady
Former USA Attorney General, celebrated political activist and founder of the International Action Centre (IAC), Ramsey Clark has a lawyer’s way of getting things done—intelligently, promptly and efficiently. A long term anti-war activist, Clark has initiated procedures to impeach United States President George W Bush and USA Vice-President Dick Cheney for crimes committed against the Iraqi people during the war on Iraq. To get the ball rolling, the IAC has already gathered some 400,000 signatures.
Khilafah.com Journal
Praise be to Allah, the Muslim Ummah is now increasingly aware of the double standards of western policies, but a significant few are still captivated by the elaborate illusion of “democratic free and fair” elections. These people really believe George Bush Jnr.’s claim to be bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. Besides the fact that the claim is one a long line of lies designed to divert attention from elusive Iraqi WMD, the USA has consistently pursued capitalist interests, and has undermined so-called democracy whenever it obstructed other overriding interests like economic or strategic objectives.
Justin Raimondo
They lied us into war ? and now they’re lying about the lies. Yes, my friends, it’s come to this. Having exhausted, for the moment , their supply of fabrications, the War Party is now rationalizing ? in effect, recycling ? previously exposed lies. Logical reasons for the apparent absence of WMD in Iraq ? that they never existed in the first place, or else were destroyed after Gulf War I, as Hans Blix and Scott Ritter aver ? are completely inadmissible, but logic has little to do with it.
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