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Tim Wise
As someone who regularly writes about racism, I have long been intrigued by the “whiteness as rightness” symbolism that pervades ous culture. Yet, the full force of this process never really hit me until last week. It was then that I found myself at the mall, passing a line of parents and their children, waiting to have a few seconds alone with Santa. You know Santa, right? The big white guy who only works one day a year and yet no one calls him lazy; the big white guy who exploits elfin labor in a sweatshop for no pay while his wife does all the housework, and yet no one calls him a slave master; the big white guy who invades millions of homes on Christmas Eve and yet, no one arrests him for breaking and entering. Yeah, that one.
Racist Terrorist Groups in the Heart of the USA
The Bush men decorate our holidays in Homeland Security yellow, orange and red, while demonizing Islamic green as the color of the most implacable foes of Western “civilization.” Yet official silence conspires to hide genocidal maniacs in our midst who have sworn to erase the Black presence from the landscape of the United States: White Terror. Tens of thousands of members of a racist legion operate openly in every corner of the nation ? men, women, juveniles, extended families, cells, gangs, churches, clans, militias, border armies, all engaged in what they consider to be a war to the death against non-white America.
Ali Abunimah
When, on Christmas Day, a Palestinian blew himself up at a bus stop in Tel Aviv, the mass media was quick to declare that the suicide bombing marked the end of a period of “relative calm” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which had supposedly lasted since the last Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa on 4 October. In fact, the period has been one of intense Israeli violence, in which 117 Palestinians were killed, including 23 children. Clearly, someone’s not telling the whole story.
Hani Shukrallah
Year one of the “new American century” seemed to end on a propitious note. Saddam Hussein, embodiment of history’s first truly global empire’s demonic other, was captured and, in the best imperial traditions, put on public display. Haggard, dazed and dishevelled, he was the star of the televised medical examination that was made to substitute for the parade of manacled barbarian chieftains and booty that once drew the crowds.
Joseph Massad
One of the most important changes that the Oslo process brought about was the de facto transformation, indeed the ultimate corruption, of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, from a liberation movement representing the entire Palestinian people, into a vassal regime called the Palestinian Authority, representing only one third of the Palestinian people. While Israel continues to speak as if representing world Jewry, the exiled Palestinian majority are simply referred to, in accordance with US and Israeli parlance, as “refugees”, and Israeli Palestinians are referred to by Israeli diktat as “Israeli Arabs”.
Dahr Jamail
"This little boy and girl, their father was shot by the USA. Who will take care of this family? Who will watch these children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why did they kill my brother? What is the reason? Nobody told me. He was a truck driver. What is his crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him with 150 bullets! Did they kill him just because they wanted to shoot a man? That?s it? This is the reason? Why didn?t anyone talk to me and tell me why they have killed my brother? Is killing people a normal thing now, happening everyday? This is our future? This is the future that the USA promised Iraq?”
Ramzy Baroud
There is an awakening in Israel, and less conspicuously among Jewish intellectuals elsewhere, coupled with a dramatic shift in terminology that conveys a different breed of apprehension: suicide bombings, militants, and Molotov cocktails are conceding to a much greater distress: demography, Jewish identity, democracy vs. apartheid. Opposite to Israel?s rude awakening however, the Palestinian leadership swarms with confusion, unable to unify its ranks behind a single idea. In an attempt to reflect political shrewdness they are only yielding further ideological disintegration.
Norman Solomon
Few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee facing charges that she violated the Official Secrets Act. So far, the mainstream USA media has ignored her, and the UK authorities plan to put her in jail in as quiet a manner as possible. However, the case raises profound questions about democracy and the public’s right to know on both sides of the Atlantic, for it details how, in the lead-up to war against Iraq, the USA and UK governments were systematically spying on their fellow Security Council members, at exactly the time when they were trying to gain support for their invasion plans.
Manuel Valenzuela
As the USA erupts in an assortment of colors marking the holiday season, a new color has made its way into the cocktail of delight and merriment. The most un-Christmas-like color has infiltrated itself into our collective holiday cheer, creating with its presence a most frightful time of year. Like a most unwelcome neighbor or relative, orange has crept inside our homes and communities, making its annual appearance just in time to spoil our most cherished and comforting holiday.
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