JONATHAN COOK Washington’s reputation as an “honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in tatters after four years of indulging Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence. The Obama administration desperately needs to resurrect a credible peace process. Faced with a diplomatic impasse between Israel and the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, John Kerry, the US [...]
Lawrence Davidson Part I – Bureaucracy The institutions of modern society, including governments, large economic structures, and military forces, are organized in bureaucratic fashion. A bureaucracy is a form of organization that operates by means of a wide range of closely supervised departments capable of performing specific tasks in efficient ways. This division of labor, or [...]
Part I – The Hero Becomes the Hunted It was back in 2006 that Julian Assange and associates founded the Wikileaks website. Their goal was and is a noble and necessary one. Wikileaks aims at forcing the world’s governments to act with greater transparency, and therefore possibly rule more justly. It was Assange’s opinion that [...]
Part I – Real Threats? In mid February 2012 an array of top U.S. intelligence chiefs appeared before Senate Intelligence Committee to give their annual report on “currant and future worldwide threats” to national security. Those testifying included CIA Director David Petraeus, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. General Ronald Burgess, and [...]
An Analysis (22 January 2012) by Lawrence Davidson Part I – The Spanish Front Among the numerous wars that are perennially being waged worldwide is the one between truth-tellers and those who would suppress the truth. I have alluded to this war in prior analyses that took up the plight of such truth-tellers as Bradley Manning and [...]
2011 was a turbulent year for the world. With chained revolutions in the Arab world, mounting financial crisis in Europe and the unprecedented wave of protests and mass demonstrations in the U.S. against the corporate system of the government which has long swallowed the rights of the defenseless majority of the people voraciously, one can [...]
An Analysis (3 December 2011) by Lawrence Davidson Part I – Robin Hood of the Information Age Julian Assange, who might be the man most hated by the U.S. government, was given Australia’s Walkley Foundation Award for outstanding journalism last week. He accepted it from a distance, using Skype, because he is under house arrest in England pending [...]
Mazin Qumsiyeh Back to the (ab)normal and unpredictable situation here in Palestine. I give talks to visiting international delegations, we deal with problems, we organize activities, we attend events including various forms of non-violent resistance, I teach students, I do clinical service, I write on my upcoming books, eat great food, have wonderful conversations etc. I keep [...]
Stuart Littlewood Warped “inquiry” invites mega-mischief “Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law… the flotilla acted recklessly in attempting [...]
The famous little white dog listened intently to his master’s voice from the gramophone trumpet… Will ‘Nipper’ Cameron obey Tel Aviv’s trumpet or vote for Palestinian freedom? Britain and NATO were keen as mustard to establish a no-fly zone over Libya to “protect civilians” but too cowardly to do the same for the Palestinians, who [...]