contributions

I still remember the era of the "The Last Temptation of Christ". A fiction movie, yet caused tremendous temper and protests in the USA, not to mention setting fire to a movie theater in France. Similarly was the reaction to the infamous story, "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdi, which resulted in the death of few Pakistani protesters.
How would you feel if one day, you are on train or walking in the street with your teenage daughter or son and you see a Chinese guy laughing at the (…)

LATEST: ROBERT REDFORD has urged journalists to investigate US President GEORGE W BUSH’s administration - because he sees strong similarities between Bush’s government and the events leading to the Watergate scandal which forced President RICHARD NIXON to resign.
Redford starred in 1976 movie ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN alongside DUSTIN HOFFMAN, as The Washington Post journalists BOB WOODWARD and CARL BERNSTEIN, who brought about the events that led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
And (…)

NEW YORK—In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal.
If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations (…)

Nebraskans for Peace caught a fair amount of flak last summer in calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney during his whirlwind visit to Lincoln. State Republican Party Chair David Kramer, for instance, dismissed our impeachment call in an Associated Press wire story as just "gimmickry," commenting that our organization had "a history of distasteful and bizarre behavior."
We knew when we raised the call, though, what we were letting ourselves in for. Here, the capital (…)

How many licks does it take to get to the Bushie Rove center of a Bushie Flop?
In Plain Sight: Why the Betrayal of Our National Security by the Bush White House Matters
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
July 5, 2005
"In essence, whatever the legal outcome (which has been driven by political considerations — that is why it has taken two years to move the "investigation" forward, if it is moving forward), this fact remains clear: In order to send a message to anyone who would expose that the White (…)

I watched "Meet the Press" on Sunday (Oct 5), a show that more accurately should be called the "Tim Russert Kiss-ass Hour" (or TRKA - which, appropriately, sounds like the title of one of the more knuckle-dragging species of college fraternities). The show’s sole purpose for being is to allow Bush administration officials and other darlings of the rightwing to drop by for coffee-and-camera time each Sunday morning and present their slanted version of the latest outrage they have committed on (…)

"It depends", said Bill Clinton, "on what the meaning of ’is’ is" ; and he was promptly pilloried by scandalized commentators and shocked - shocked - legislators whose morals and motives were of course impeccable. But there is curious silence on the part of these paragons of semantics and virtue now that there is disagreement about the meaning of words used by two pathetic crackpots who occupy posts in the present US administration.
Washington’s charlatan-in-chief, Cheney, has boasted he (…)

The American Dream in Denmark
In honor of Independence Day, let us consider the American Dream, the idea that through intelligence and hard work you can move up from the social class of your parents. It still exists . . . in Scandinavia and Canada. From the Ottawa Citizen:
"Turns out, the American dream is playing out more strikingly north of the 49th parallel, says Canadian economist Miles Corak, editor of a recent book exploring generational mobility in Europe and North (…)

Most people in Britain want troops withdrawn from Iraq - and so do most Iraqis, according to opinion polls. Trade unions are calling for early withdrawal, as are some Labour MPs and the Liberal Democrats. But many well-intentioned people argue that the US-led occupation must end only when the country is stable. A swift withdrawal, they fear, would plunge the country into civil war.
In one sense this position is the same as that of Bush and Blair, who consistently say troops will not stay (…)

Some feel frustrated and discouraged as death and injury tolls climb and American support wanes
TIKRIT, July 4, 2005 — At Saddam Hussein’s vast palace complex that is now the U.S. Forward Operating Base Danger in Tikrit, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Taluto contemplates the war American soldiers under his command are now waging.
"The enemy is intrinsic," said Taluto, who heads the 42nd Infantry Division and the Army units attached to it in Iraq. "They’re infiltrating the Iraqi security forces as (…)