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Yoshie Furuhashi | 1 Aug 2007 02:12
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A Question from Iran: "What Do They Know of Us in the West?"

I have mentioned that many Iranian readers come to MR/MRZine.
According to Alexa today, 11% of all visitors to MR/MRZine are from
Iran (at
<http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=monthlyreview.org&url=monthlyreview.org/>).
 That's a really large proportion, considering that none of the pages
has been fully translated into Persian and that Iran's population is
merely 66 million out of the total world population of 6.6 billion.

What are the Iranians who come to MR/MRZine reading?  Noam Chomsky's
criticism of American imperialism?  John Bellamy Foster's thoughts on
Marxism and nature?  Samir Amin's world systems perspective?  Economic
analysis of capitalism by the founders of Monthly Review?  Albert
Einstein's personal statement on socialism (which is a perennial
favorite among first-time visitors who come to our Web site through
Google)?  Many criticisms of politics in the Middle East, including
Iran?

No.

The most popular article for Iranian visitors to MR/MRZine, read by a
majority of them, is "Iran's Quiet Revolution," by Deborah Campbell,
with photography by Alfred Yaghobzadeh:
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/campbell101106.html>.  Some of what
Campbell says is probably new to many Western readers, and
Yaghobzadeh's photographs capture aspects of everyday life in Iran
that seldom appear in the Western media.  But neither the content of
Campbell's observations nor Yaghobzadeh's photographs can be a
revelation to Iranians.  They must be familiar to them.

That very familiarity, I submit, is what makes this article attractive
(Continue reading)

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gregory meyerson | 1 Aug 2007 15:19
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Re: 1934: The Plot Against America (Harper's)

hi:  I couldn't access the documentary.

has anyone succeeded in accessing it?
On Jul 31, 2007, at 3:43 PM, Sid Shniad wrote:

>
>    [1]http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000651
>
>
>    Harpers                [2]July 28, 2007
>
>
>    DEPARTMENT
>
>
>
>    [3]No Comment
>
>
>    1934: The Plot Against America
>
>
>
>    By [4]Scott Horton
>
>
>    Im back from the land of heather and thistles, not to mention wee
>    drams and lukewarm ale, but on my way out a friend at the BBC  
> alerted
>    me to [5]this
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gregory meyerson | 1 Aug 2007 15:40
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on plot

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

I found this, which appears good enough to listen to program.  so nix 
my request.

g

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Yoshie Furuhashi | 1 Aug 2007 17:46
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Fixers

Ayub Nuri, a Kurdish man from Halabja, was a fixer for the Western
media in Iraq (he is now based in New York City, having received a
scholarship from Columbia).  A fixer, in the words of Nuri, is "a
journalist's interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional
lifesaver."  Local fixers, more or less, shape what foreign
journalists, most of whom cannot speak any of the local languages well
and are not familiar with local politics and culture, see and hear.
Without them the Western media are unable to do their work.

Who become fixers for the Western media?  Those who speak a language
of the West, especially English, in the literal sense, of course, but
also the language of the West in the figurative sense, the language of
political liberalism and humanitarian imperialism.

It is no surprise that the point of view of a Kurdish man from Halabja
largely overlaps with that of of the liberal, humanitarian empire.  It
would be astonishing if it didn't.  Many Kurds must have felt about
America precisely the way Albanians in Kosovo felt about it: their
best shot at independence from the country of which they have never
felt themselves to be an integral part.  And they felt this feeling
more deeply than Albanians, as Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party
government was incomparably more brutal toward Kurds than the Yugoslav
government ever was toward Albanians.

But it is not just a Kurdish fixer who thought that way in Iraq.  In
an essay Nuri published in New York Times Magazine, he says, "I
supported the war, as did many of my countrymen and _pretty much all
the fixers_" (emphasis, "At War, at Home, at Risk," 29 July 2007,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/magazine/29iraqi-t.html>).  That is
the power of hegemony.  Just about all countries have ethnic and
(Continue reading)

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Sid Shniad | 2 Aug 2007 00:22
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Sooner or later, Israel will have to deal with Hamas


   Globe and Mail July 16, 2007
   Sooner or later, Israel will have to deal with Hamas
   By Shira Herzog
   Efraim Halevy, the former chief of the Mossad, calls it "Plan B for
   Gaza" - keep pressure on Hamas but accept the reality of its control
   on the ground. Of course, that would mean engaging with Hamas (in a
   limited way) to further Israeli interests. Instead, we have "Plan A"
   that mistakenly hopes to boycott Hamas into oblivion.
   In the short run, "Plan B" could lead to the release of Gilad Shalit,
   the Israeli soldier abducted a year ago, and to a ceasefire that would
   halt rocket attacks on Israel's south. In the longer term, it could
   assist a renewed political process.
   Right now, however, there's only the boycott approach, and we've seen
   the results of this kind of thing before.
   Last year, the United States and Israel miscalculated the outcome of
   Palestinian elections that gave Hamas a majority in the Palestinian
   Legislative Council. Subsequent sanctions failed to significantly turn
   the popular tide against Hamas, and U.S. efforts to shore up security
   forces controlled by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas
   ultimately failed. (His Gaza forces caved to Hamas in the recent round
   of internecine violence.) Now, Israel and the U.S. want to isolate
   Gaza from the West Bank, limit supplies to turn the people against
   Hamas and help Mr. Abbas defeat his rivals in early elections. And
   with Hamas sidelined, they want to restart negotiations on a peace
   agreement. So, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is returning,
   Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is to meet Mr. Abbas to discuss
   "quality of life improvements" for West Bank residents (code for less
   restrictions on their movement) and former British prime minister Tony
   Blair has been sent with a ! limited mandate to reform Palestinian
(Continue reading)

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Sid Shniad | 2 Aug 2007 00:20
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Charges stayed for two men in terror case

Globe and Mail				August 1, 2007

The Toronto 17: and then there were 15

Charges stayed for two men in terror case

By Omar el Akkad 

When 17 suspects were arrested as part of a massive anti-terrorism bust and
made their first appearance in a Toronto-area courtroom last June, the whole
world came out to watch. Reporters from CNN, The New York Times and
al-Jazeera packed the courthouse parking lot; news of an alleged plot to
blow up Canadian landmarks using fertilizer bombs made headlines everywhere.

Fourteen months later, the spectacle and sensationalism of that initial
appearance is long gone, as Crown prosecutors now go about trying to prove
the allegations against the suspects. As it became evident yesterday, that's
proving to be anything but straightforward.

The number of suspects who will stand trial as a result of Canada's most
high-profile anti-terrorism sweep shrank again yesterday, as two young
offenders rounded up in the wave of arrests had the charges against them
stayed.

There are still some conditions to which the two youth suspects must adhere,
but the agreement between Crown prosecutors and defence lawyers to stay the
charges effectively means the youths' involvement with the case is over.
When a charge is stayed, it can be revived by prosecutors any time within a
year; however, that very rarely happens. After a year, the charge is fully
withdrawn.
(Continue reading)

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Sid Shniad | 2 Aug 2007 00:21
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Entrapment -- or 9/11 redux?


   United Press International 6/26/2006
   Commentary:
   Entrapment -- or 9/11 redux?
   The pseudo-al-Qaida gang's plans were "more inspirational
   than operational."
           FBI Deputy Director John Pistole
   By Arnaud de Borchgrave
   UPI Editor at Large
   Washington, June 26 (UPI) -- Miami, dubbed the "capital" city of Latin
   America, with a population two-thirds Hispanic, is also known as the
   terminal for its Caribbean "Love Boats," for sin and fun under the sun
   and dusk-to-dawn disco partying where salsa meets funk in one long
   tintamarre on the South Beach strip. Seldom mentioned in the hubbub is
   nearby Liberty City where the FBI believes it has uncovered the
   biggest plot to harm America since Sept. 11, 2001.
   This reporter spent a month living in Liberty City while researching a
   book on urban terrorism following the infamous race riots that killed
   18 and caused $100 million in damage in 1980. Three days and nights of
   mayhem followed an unpopular verdict in a case of white-on-black
   police brutality. 1980 was also the year of Castro's infamous Mariel
   boatlift that emptied his prisons and brought 125,000 unskilled
   workers to Miami.
   Bounded to the north by Northwest 79th Street, to the west by
   Northwest 27th Avenue, the south by Northwest 46th Street, and to the
   east by Interstate 95, the rundown, poverty-plagued Liberty City is
   home to half a million blacks. It produced a plethora of rap stars
   ranging from Luke of 2 Live Crew to Trick Daddy, Jacki-O and Fred from
   Da Band. Within the area is a yet more deprived zone known as Little
   Haiti. Many of its unemployed youth have served time for possession.
(Continue reading)

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Sid Shniad | 2 Aug 2007 00:22
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The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour (video)


   The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K30_Zz7tHYs
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Sid Shniad | 2 Aug 2007 00:25
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The Masjid & the mindset of despair


   http://www.hindu.com/2007/07/13/stories/2007071353821100.htm
   The Hindu July 13, 2007
   News Analysis
   The Masjid & the mindset of despair
   By Robert Jensen
   The Lal Masjid story is framed as crazed radical Islamist forces
   challenging relatively restrained government forces. But there is much
   more to it.
   For my first three days in Pakistan, no conversation could go more
   than a few minutes without a reference to the crisis at the Lal Masjid
   (Red Mosque) compound. I had landed in Islamabad on July 8, and by
   then it seemed clear that government forces would eventually storm the
   mosque and the attached women's seminary to end the confrontation with
   fundamentalist clerics and their supporters.
   The final assault was finally unleashed as two companions and I drove
   to Lahore as part of a lecture tour. During several hours of intense
   discussion in the car, they gave me background and details that
   explained the real tragedy of the conflict.
   When the news of the final assault came via cell phone we all fell
   silent, and we all quietly cried for those killed and for
   opportunities lost, out of our grief and from our fear.
   In the western news media and even much of the Pakistani press, the
   story was framed as crazed radical Islamist forces challenging
   relatively restrained government forces. Indeed, the two brothers who
   ran the mosque preached an interpretation of Islam that was mostly
   reactionary and sometimes violent. None of us in the car two Muslims
   and one Christian, all progressive in theological and political
   thought supported such views.
   But there was more to the story. Farid Esack,
(Continue reading)

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Sid Shniad | 2 Aug 2007 00:23
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Ban on leasing land to Arabs slammed


   JTA (The Global News Service of the Jewish People) 07/31/2007
   Ban on leasing land to Arabs slammed
   By Ben Harris
   A proposed Israeli law that would uphold the government's refusal to
   lease land to Israeli Arabs has generated broad opposition among
   American Jews.
   New York (JTA) -- A proposed Israeli law that would uphold the
   government's refusal to lease land to Israeli Arabs has generated
   broad opposition among American Jews concerned about the bill's moral
   implications and its impact on the Jewish state's international
   standing.
   The bill allows the Israel Lands Authority to continue its refusal to
   lease land owned by the Jewish National Fund to non-Jews. It was
   endorsed 64-16 earlier this month in its first Knesset reading.
   Founded more than a century ago, the JNF was instrumental in funneling
   money to help settle Jews in prestate Israel. Approximately 60 percent
   of Israelis today live on the 13 percent of Israeli land owned by the
   organization.
   Under an agreement between the groups dating back to the 1960s, JNF
   maintains ownership of the lands, but the ILA administers them in
   keeping with fund's goals.
   In recent days the proposed law permitting a ban on leasing JNF land
   to Arabs was slammed by the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest
   American synagogue movement, and Ameinu, the American affiliate of the
   World Labor Zionist Movement. Also, in an interview with JTA, the
   national director of the Anti-Defamation League criticized the
   measure, albeit in less stringent terms.
   One American group, the Zionist Organization of America, has endorsed
   the bill. Otherwise, in the United States, JNF has found itself
(Continue reading)

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Gmane