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Hywel Williams
Systems of belief, once the chilly hand of establishment wisdom descends upon them, lose the power of dissidence. Having once been heresies, they acquire offices, secretaries and expense accounts. The history of religions, like the history of politics, is best seen from the bottom up. And what one sees down there is the power and the obviousness of what orthodoxy calls heresy, because it’s the heretics who point out that the course of subsequent history is not actually what the founders and the original principles intended it to be.
Geov Parrish
Remember those quaint, nostalgic times when this season was associated with the phrase “Peace On Earth”? That is, way back in the days before our born-again leader with the proclaimed personal ear of God started ordering up wars the way other politicians ask for planning studies? Before our nation became so drunken with manufactured bogeymen and antiseptic media invasions and patriotic warmongering fever that war?s unpleasantness made it something people wished absolutely to avoid? When peace was considered a good thing, not the way of cowards?
Jacob Bender
My own response to the events of 9/11 was to begin work on a documentary film that I entitled “Reason and Revelation: Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas in Their Time and Ours.” Who were these three men, Averroes the Muslim, Moses Maimonides the Jew and Thomas Aquinas the Christian, these three geniuses from a long-ago age, and what, if anything, do they have to teach us today? Before we can answer that question, we must first explore, as will my film, the world into which they were born.
Scott Burchill
Sections of a leaked memo, sent to CIA Director George Tenet some time after the capture of Saddam Hussein, have been surfacing in the Australian press and on the internet. Much of it has been kept back from public eye, but the World Crisis can now provide for the first time its full text. The memo discusses matters concerning the history of USA foreign policy. For “Doubting Thomas’”, and those of you with short memories, it serves as a useful reminder of the extents to which the Washington establishment will go to foster democracy in other parts of the world.
Kris Axtman
Some people are so attatched to the illusion that the USA is a morally superior society, that they refuse to believe their country could be a source of terrorism. Sustained by isolated ideologies, they refuse to admit that some of their neighbours live in fear from groups of fellow Americans who would like to see them dead or placed in exile. Earlier this week, I posted an article about a white racist organisation that had built up an arsenal of chemical and conventional weaponry, possibly intended for the mass killing of black Americans. Some people suspected the article because it was originally published in the Black Commentator. The following article, published by the respected Christian Science Monitor, with images from a CBS News station, should set the matter beyond doubt.
Dahr Jamail for the World Crisis Web
So far, every single journalist I?ve spoken with here has told me that they had followed the news closely prior to their arrival, and knew to prepare themselves for it. But after being here even just a day, have been astonished at how terrible the situation here truly is. This was my experience as well upon arriving my very first day. It has now been over 9 months since the ?war? ended. The country of Iraq remains in chaos, and the lack of consistent basic services such as petrol, security, electricity, and running water continue to afflict Iraqis.
Robin Cook
It is not enough for No 10 now to justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that they have indeed found weapons of mass destruction - but in Libya. Their novel defence appears to be that their strategy was right and it was only a minor detail that they invaded the wrong country. They must not be allowed to get away with it. One of the questions they were repeatedly asked before the war was: “Why Iraq?” Why was such high, urgent priority attached to Iraq, when there were many other countries where the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was greater?
Gwynne Dyer
Two years after American troops arrived in Kabul, how is the Bush administration’s project for a democratic and prosperous Afghanistan coming along? Well, the opium crop is booming: 3,600 metric tons this year, almost back up to the peak production of 4,600 metric tons that was reached before the Taliban banned the crop in 1999. Most of Zabul and Oruzgan provinces and half of the Qandahar region are once again Taliban-controlled by night, and USA troops and those of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have come under fire more often in the past three months than in all of the previous fifteen.
Dahr Jamail
Ali looks me calmly in the eye and politely asks me if he may ask me a personal question. I tell him, “Of course.” After pausing, he takes a deep breath and asks, “If someone invades your house, kills some of your relatives while taking the rest to jail, steals your things, remains in your home and then threatens you and tries to tell you what to do in your own home, what would you do? Would you welcome him with flowers? What would you do if this happened to you in your home?”
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